A long time ago, a fresh inexperienced but sexy maths tutor accepted a tuition assignment in a rough neighbourhood.
She would then turn up every Thursday, without fail, at the door of her student’s one-room flat, located in one of those decrepit government-forsaken HDB estates which was somehow always overlooked for upgrading.
For the tattoo-laden Ah Beng who lived next door, it was literally love at first sight on that fateful day, when he was jolted awake by the loud techno music as the sexy tutor pulled her black car into the parking lot downstairs.
Taking his chopper and running out of his house to confront whoever that dared disturb his ‘beauty’ sleep, he shall forever remember that very moment, when his chopper fell to the floor, as he stood transfixed at those beautiful eyes …
that pair of smiling lips …
and that gorgeous dashing hairstyle …
of the tutor who surpassed the quality of every Japanese model he had stored in his computer.
And so in the months that followed, this love-stricken Ah Beng would cancel all his Thursday fights and debt-collecting appointments just to sneak a peek at her through the window panes. Words like Trigonometry, Statistics and Geometry were sweet music to his ears, as he would press them against the wall to hear her sweet voice throughout her tuition sessions. After awhile, he was even quietly confident he could score an O-Level Maths distinction and wondered how on earth could he have failed his PSLE in the first place.
And now the day has come for this 男子汉大丈夫 to take action. Tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, the Ah Beng decided to empty his POSB piggy bank and bravely buy her a diamond ring.
But to his dismay, just as he was about to pay for the diamond ring in his neighbourhood jewelry stall, he spotted the sexy maths tutor with an even bigger diamond ring on her finger!
With his newly-acquired mathematical powers obtained from months of eavesdropping on her lessons, he deduced that:
Her diamond and his diamond were geometrically similar and their surface areas were in the ratio 9:49 respectively.
- Find the ratio of the height of the diamonds.
- Given that his diamond costs $1000. Find the price of the tutor’s bigger diamond.
Assuming $1000 was all he had, calculate the minimum amount (correct to the nearest dollar) he needed to borrow from his loanshark boss in order to buy a bigger diamond ring for her.
IMPORTANT: In the world of Similar Figures, keywords like price, cost, capacity, mass etc. are ALL synonymous with VOLUME.
And though the Ah Beng may be now reasonably proficient in math but, like many unfortunate students, he may be intimidated by the lack of information in such problems and end up wasting time thinking of how to calculate the volume of a diamond – something that even the sexy maths tutor doesn’t know!
