Students were instructed to write a story of their own using 3rd person perspective.

Matthew Yam from 4A writes the adventure of a young boy struggling with his upcoming geometry exams.

“Why? Why? Why do I need to learn such boring geometry?” Michael grumbled.

He was the worst student to learn geometry. Every test he fails or even gets zero marks. Whenever it’s geometry class, he plays with his pencils and erasers as toys and even sleeps. His geometry teacher, Mr. Chan was always angry with him and almost bursting.

Exam week was coming and he must study, but he was very lazy and didn’t want to study (this was also a reason why he always fails his tests). He sat on the sofa and turned on the TV.

“How dare you! Do your revision! You haven’t done it before! DO IT NOW!” His mum shouted angrily.

“Mum, can’t I watch the movie ‘til the end?”

“A leopard never changes its spots. You can do whatever you want! The person that fails and gets punished isn’t me anyway.”

“Alright…” he said unwillingly and did the revision. He opened his geometry book and suddenly, a bright light came out from the book…

The bright light took him to another planet. He was so confused and in front of him, there was a person dressed like a prince.

“Welcome to Planet Math,” the person bowed to Michael. “I’m your tour guide, Henry. I’m also the prince of this planet. Which hotel will you choose? Or would you rather choose the hotel that is the most expensive, but has the best service?”

Michael was more confused. “Uh… Maybe the one that you said was the most expensive but the service is the best. And may I visit your palace? I haven’t seen a real one before except in books.”

“Yes, of course. Follow me.”

Michael followed him and walked around.

They walked through markets and houses and finally they got to a broken bridge. There were a bunch of shapes quarreling.

“I’m the biggest! Can’t you see I am taller than you?”

“Yes, you are the tallest, but also the thinnest!”

“I don’t care! I am the biggest!”

Henry stopped the quarrel and said,“Oh yes, I forgot this bridge was broken. I usually came out with that hill. It’s not very far away,” Henry said, pointing at the hill.

“Not very far away? It’s at least 1 km away from here!!!”

“Alright. Let’s fix this problem first. But it takes a long time even though we just need to arrange their area from the smallest to the biggest!”

“Okay.”

In geometry lessons, he has learnt the formula of square, rectangle, parallelogram and triangle. However, there were rhombus and trapezium, which bewildered him much. “How can I calculate the area of the rhombus?” he thought.

“If you want to know the formula of rhombus, try to cut the rhombus into four triangles and copy it into eight. Then use the eight triangles to combine a rectangle.”

“How can you know what I’m thinking? Can you read my mind?”Michael was immensely surprised.

“People on Planet Math have different powers. Mine is to read people's minds.”

Michael understood it and he drew a rhombus on the floor. He cut it into four using the diagonal lines. Then he rotated the triangles 180°. It combined into a rectangle, as Henry said.

“Now do you know the formula?” Henry asked.

“Because the rhombus’s diagonal lines equals the rectangle’s length and width...is the formula: diagonal line 1 multiplied by diagonal line 2 divided by 2 if the diagonal lines are AB and CD?”

“Correct! In short form we write it12d1d2 or d1d22 where d1 and d2 are the two diagonal lines. Now we will learn how to calculate the area of a trapezium. Can you think of the formula by yourself? You’ve learnt how to calculate some shapes’ formulas and you must know lots of skills to find the formula.”

Michael drew a trapezium on the floor and tried to combine a shape so that he knew how to calculate its area. He tried to copy one and match the longer base but it changed into a hexagon. He tried one more time and this time it became a parallelogram. “The parallelogram’s length equals the two bases of the trapezium and the height equals the trapezium’s height so the formula is…” he thought and asked, “Is the equation: base 1 plus base 2 times height divided by 2?”

“No, you miss something.”Henry shook his head.

“Base 1 plus base 2 should add brackets.”

“Short form?”

“b1+b2h2 where b1 and b2 are the bases and h is height?”

“Or…”

“12b1+b2h.”

“Great! You’ve learnt all the basic shape’s area. Now you can arrange all the shapes.” Henry cheered, bringing out a ruler.

Michael used that ruler to measure the length and height and width of the shapes, but found out that the shapes already arrange themselves a bit. In fact, the shapes listened to Henry and Michael’s conversation and tried to measure each other. Michael and Henry also helped and they arranged them quickly.

The next several weeks, Michael met a lot of friends and played together. He was over the moon, but when he thought that he couldn’t share this happiness with his little sister, he felt a bit of pity.

One day, Michael wanted to get back home and asked if he could go back home. Although Henry and his friends felt reluctant, they didn’t ask him to stay for some more days. Henry gave Michael a key chain as a souvenir and used his spaceship to fly to the Earth. Michael fell asleep in bed.

The next day, the sun stretched its arm and yawned. Its light shone all over the universe, including Planet Math. Michael got up, ate breakfast and got dressed. The sun gave him a lot of courage and he went to school. Before, he used to sleep in, but this time he had a lot of time to study because he went to school early. He was willing to do the test. He used what he had learned and did his best.

Soon, Mr. Chan distributed the test. He was on cloud nine because no one failed the test. Although Michael didn’t get full marks, Mr. Chan saw that he had studied hard. He gave a pencil case to him as a gift, which Michael likes very much. He shook his head.

“This should be given to Henry.”

“Who is Henry?”

Michael smiled but didn’t answer…

Adventure on Math Planet