Last week at the Mill the year 5 was introduced to a crazy Matsh puzzle: the Tower of Hanoi. The object of the game is to move all the disks over from one tower to the other. However: you cannot place a larger disk onto a smaller disk and you can only move one disk at the time.

The children learnt how to work as a team when solving the puzzle at the Mill. However, in class we decided to have a look at the mathematics behind it. We found that a tower with 3 rings needs a minimum of 7 moves, a tower with 4 rings a minimum of 15 moves. Some of us even found the formula to calculate how many moves 15 discs would need!

Can you find out how many moves 5 discs will need? Have a go here:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/games/towerofhanoi.html