document.write( "Question 753607: A sports store owner is a making a display with 200 baseballs. He is placing them in the shape of a square pyramid. The bottom layer has 64 baseballs placed in the shape of a square. For each consecutive layer of baseballs, one baseball is placed where 4 baseballs meet. How many layers will be in the pyramid? How many baseballs will be left over? \n" ); document.write( "
Algebra.Com's Answer #458510 by htmentor(1343)![]() ![]() You can put this solution on YOUR website! For each pair of rows on the bottom layer, there are 7 positions where 4 balls meet, and there are 7 such pairs of rows on the bottom layer. \n" ); document.write( "Similarly, for the 3rd row there are 6 positions for each pair of rows and 6 pairs of rows. \n" ); document.write( "And so on, up the pyramid. \n" ); document.write( "So the number of balls in successive rows are squares of integers counting down from 8: \n" ); document.write( "8^2,7^2,6^2,... \n" ); document.write( "64+49+36+25+16+9 = 199 \n" ); document.write( "So there is one ball left over \n" ); document.write( " |