Today from Bedtime Math: Soaking It In

The first time you use a sponge to wipe up a mess, you might be amazed at how it magically soaks up all the water, juice or other puddle of mess. The inside of a sponge is so loose and fluffy that water fills it immediately. What's crazy is that sponges are living animals. The bright blue square one in your kitchen never was, but it was made to copy real sponges that live under the ocean. Live sponges, many of which are brown, round and lumpy, have no brain, stomach or intestines: they just let seawater wash through them, from which they soak up whatever food they can. Not too exciting, but once humans discovered these animals, we found lots of uses for them, like cleaning and painting.  Since most sponges are scratchy, we then figured out how to make our own soft colorful ones. Real sponges might be fine with sitting around just drinking salt water all day, but drinking up our apple juice might be tastier.

Now here's today's math~

Wee ones: If you spill 5 ounces of juice and your sponge can soak up 3 ounces, will you be able to wipe up the whole mess in one wipe?

Little kids: If you paint with a little square sponge and make 7 blue splotches and 3 green splotches, how many sponge shapes have you made?  Bonus: If you sit on your painting and only 6 of the splotches have dried, how many sponge splotches do you now have on your pants?

Big kids: Sponges are full of holes, even more than Swiss cheese or your oldest pair of underwear. If your box-shaped sponge has 100 holes on each of its 4 sides and top and bottom, how many holes does it have?  Bonus: If you have 32 sponges in the house but only half are real, and half the real ones and half of the fake ones are pink, how many pink sponges do you have?

Answers:

Wee ones: No - 5 is more than 3.

Little kids: 10 shapes.  Bonus: 4 pant paint splotches.

Big kids: 600 holes.  Bonus: 16 pink sponges (8 real and 8 fake).