Slicing Through Chocolate: Upper Primary Mathematics Competition Question

Imagine you have a bar of chocolate and wish to cut it into individual pieces. Like the chocolate in the image, the bar is one solid piece but moulded to have distinct chunks.

If your bar is 3 chunks wide and 5 chunks long, how many cuts do you need to make so that you have all individual chunks?

A slice means one straight-line cut with a sharp knife. You may not stack pieces on top of, or next to, each other in such a way as to cut through multiple pieces with one cut.

In general, if a bar of chocolate is n chunks wide and m chunks long, how many cuts (as described above) would you need to make in order to separate it into individual pieces?

Feel free to comment, ask questions and even check your answer in the comments box below powered by Disqus Google+.

If you enjoy using this website then please consider making a donation - every little helps :-)

You can receive these questions directly to your email box or read them in an RSS reader. Subscribe using the links on the right.

Don’t forget to follow Gifted Mathematics on Google+, Facebook or Twitter. You may add your own interesting questions on our Google+ Community and Facebook..

You can also subscribe to our Bookmarks on StumbleUpon and Pinterest. Many resources never make it onto the pages of Gifted Mathematics but are stored in these bookmarking websites to share with you.