Activity Overview
The classic "Tower of Hanoi" problem involves moving discs of different sizes amongst three columns with the restrictions that large discs can’t be placed on small discs and discs can only be moved one at a time. The challenge is to move all the discs from one column to another. This activity requires students to solve this problem and to find a relationship between the number of moves and the number of discs. The TI-Nspire file contains a virtual Tower of Hanoi.
Objectives
ACMNA296 – Graph simple non-linear relations with and without the use of digital technologies and solve simple related equations
Vocabulary
- Non-Linear function
- Recursion
- Spreadsheet
About the Lesson
Students explore the relationship between the number of discs and moves required to solve the classic “Tower of Hanoi” problem. The TI-Nspire file produced by Andy Kemp contains a virtual Tower of Hanoi interactive that records the number of moves and allows the number of discs to be changed; the file also provides feedback stating whether the minimum number of moves has been achieved.