Cups and Beans

So this week in class we practiced one of the more fun ways to teach the basics of algebra, what my professor calls Cups and Beans. It's a great way to show you need to keep the problem "balanced," that whatever you do to one side to solve the problem, you need to do to the other. You set up cups and beans on a "scale," cups are x, black beans are positive while green are negative. I'll use the given sample problem x-3=-7

You start with setting up the problem:

Next, you determine what needs to be added or taken away to isolate x, in this case, +3 to cancel out the -3 on the cup side. When adding the beans, you need to add one bean to each side simultaneously, one bean in each hand:

Here's the problem with the +3 added to each side:

When you add a positive 3 to a negative 3 you get 0, so the next step is to pair the beans and remove the zero's:

The final step is to simply solve for x:

Here are a few more examples

x+4=-6

This one is a bit simpler, you dont have to add anything, just take away the same amount of positives from each side

x+5=8

It makes more sense when you practice yourself, and its more fun the more you do it. This particular method was review to me because I learned it in the first portion of the class I took last semester, but it's still as much fun as I remember. I really do think this helps understand algebra better. I even showed it to my mom, and her reaction was "Ahhhh, fun with math!" So there you have it. Cups and Beans