Puzzles

By figuring out this puzzle, me and my friend had similar and different ways of solving it. We were supposed to count how many triangles created the image of a cat. Are first approach we very different. I started to count the triangles one at a time from the cat's head down. My friend started to count the triangles from the tail up. We both viewed the puzzle from another viewpoint. Our first operation of visual thinking was completely different right away. As I counted, I found myself matching the shapes and colors of the different triangles together. I saw the two ears first, the two small eyes. My friend didn't even use matching as a visual way of thinking until she reached the head. Colors didn't help her match the triangles, just shape. When I started to count the triangles at the tail, I was rotating the ways the triangles created the pattern of the tail. I was mainly visually thinking about rotation when counting the tail, and so was my friend. She said she would actually rotate the paper to count the triangles. By concentrating on grouping matching triangles together and rotating the triangles at the tail, I was able to find the correct amount of triangles. My friend was only one triangle short. We realized she forgot to count one triangle in the tail because she was rotating the paper too much. The main differences in our visual operations of solving the puzzle was our different viewpoints at the start.

The other puzzle we did was a bracelet one. You were supposed to find the identical bracelets that matched each other. The first way I started to solve this puzzle was by using the visual operation of matching again. I started off my finding the part in the bracelet that had two touching triangles. Then went to the right to see what was next to that. I didn't even look at the circles because I my visual memory on completing the bracelet already knew there were four circles in every bracelet from the first glance I took of the puzzle. My friend started the puzzle off by categorizing all the triangles and how they are facing. She said she looked at the two triangles touching noses and then she said she looked at the other two triangles of the bracelet that were following each other. After that, she looked at the single triangles and saw the way they were pointing. I was trying to complete the pattern by following the shapes after each other in a continuation form. She realized that the bracelets were symmetrical right after she grouped the similar triangles together. It took my awhile to realize that the same bracelet was just flip symmetrically.