Solving the Tower of Hanoi with mathematics

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM/maths clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Maths and is also internationally relevant.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• What can a seemingly simple puzzle - the Tower of Hanoi - teach us about mathematics? Professor Dan Romik, of the University of California, Davis, has investigated the Tower of Hanoi and, despite the puzzle’s apparent simplicity, has shown that it continues to yield new surprises.

• This resource explains recursion, graphical representation, fractals and shortest paths - all using the Tower of Hanoi as the foundation.

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Dan’s research and challenges them to solve the Tower of Hanoi.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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