Maths Through Stories | 17 Camels & 3 Sons

 Story of Division of 17 Camels among 3 Sons 

Storytelling creates an opportunity for students to understand the meaning of mathematics through making connections. “connect mathematical concepts to each other and to real life problems.

  

This is the story of an old man and his three sons. He has 17 camels. In his will,  he wrote to divide his 17 camels among three sons in such a way which became a problem for him.

Learning Objectives:

• Teaching mathematics and Moral value at the same time.

• To understand the concept of fraction.

• Making students aware as prime numbers can not be divided further.

• Making students aware that wisdom can solve complicated problems easily which are not possible for the normal mind.

• To inculcate the interest of the students in mathematical concepts.

Learning Outcomes

• After learning this story students should understand the value of education and knowledge.

• Students should understand the concept of fraction.

• Students should understand the concept of prime numbers.

• Students should understand, the use mathematics in real life.

Explanation of Story

Once upon a time, there was an old man who lived in a village with his three sons. The old man had only one earning source and that’s he had 17 camels.

With those 17 camels, he sold milk in the market. Suddenly, one day an old man died. He had left a letter, leaving all the properties for his three sons.

But before the old man died he wrote a letter and a will.

After the funeral work has been done perfectly, the sons read the will. In the letter, an old man shows his love and affection toward his sons.

However, In the will, he ( an old) gave all his properties to his 3 sons equally, and he distributed his assets in very different ways.

The properties were not divided equally among the three sons as 17 is an odd number and a prime number which could not be distributed among three sons.

The old man wrote in the letter that the elder one will get half of the 17 camels, the middle one will get 1 third of the 17 camels and the youngest one will get 1 ninth of his parts.

After reading the whole letter all of them were silent, they asked each other how to solve this problem.

How could they divide these 17 camels and give the eldest, middle and youngest sons?

They spent some days thinking about how they could solve this issue .

But after passing those days, all the sons get their hands down and take them to the wise man in the village who can solve this complex problem.

The wise man listened to the problem with full concern and instantly found a solution. He told them to fetch all the camels for him.

The Sons brought all the camels to the wise man’s place where he said. Wise man added a camel owned by him with those 17 camels. Now the total number of camels is 18.

Now, The wise said to the eldest son to read the letter as it says, The eldest one will get half of the 17 camels which means 18/2 = 9 camels.

So, 9 camels went to the eldest son.

So, the remaining 9 camels.

Then, the wise man told the middle son to read the letter as it says, the middle one will get 1 third of the 17 camels which means 18/3 = 6. So, 6 camels went to the second son.

The total number of camels with two brothers was 9 + 6 = 15 camels.

At least the Third son read out the letter as it says, The third one will get 1 ninth of the 17 camels which means 18/ 9 = 2 camels. So, 2 camels went to the third son.

Totally, the three sons got 9 + 6 + 2 = 17 camels as per the letter.

After that, The wise man takes his one camel back from the Total of 18 camels.

The wise man solves issues with his smartness and talent.

Moral:

All the time we think it is money which is so powerful, but we are also wrong. If we have an enormous amount of money but we do not know how to use it then it will be momentous and valuable dust which you keep in the locker. So, read a lot and enrich your brain potential.

Evaluation:

When students understand this concept clearly then the teacher should give some more problems to the students to check whether students are able to solve the problem or not. Teachers can modify the problem as given below.

Problem 1

If the old man had 11 Horses, he gave half of the Horses to the eldest son, one-fourth to the middle one and one-sixth to the youngest. Explain how these can be divided.

Solution

Students can easily solve this problem by using the mathematical concepts given in the above story.

Eldest got 6 Horses, Middle one got 3 Horses and Youngest got 2 Horses. (6 + 3 + 2 = 11)

Problem 2

If the old man had 23 Goats, he gave half of the Goats to the eldest son, one-third to the middle one and one-eighth to the youngest. Explain how these can be divided.

Solution

Students can easily solve this problem by using the mathematical concepts given in the above story.

Eldest got 12 Goats, Middle one got 8 Horses and Youngest got 3 Horses. (12 + 8 + 3 = 23)

Applications

When students clearly understand the implementation of the concept, then students will be asked to frame one more story like this. This practice creates interest of the students towards mathematical concepts and it also attracts the students towards mathematics at their early stage.

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