Four Word Problems
The Pollination Problem
A girl is designing a fabric garden. She wonders how long it could sustain a
monarch’s shadow. She begins by weighing the cast of an unshed tooth, then
checks her skin for the ghost of a scar. If she scans at a steady rate, how soon will
she remember what became of the local wildlife? Use the thickness of a rabbit’s
fibrous tunic as your starting point.
The Balance Problem
A boy hums along to a picture’s sense of place. His pitch prevents an even step,
and a water molecule reshapes the bottom of his shoe. Use a number line to
show how the mud a field obscures disperses. Remember to account for the
ringing in the boy’s ears, the speed with which he greets the tallest grasses.
The Seasonal Problem
A girl’s voice obscures her window as winter sings across the sea. She begins to
forget the scent of a night without stars, how the morning fog mutes the pines.
Using the radius of an abandoned nest, find the area of incubated ice beneath
the girl’s home. Next, calculate how long it takes the cold to fuse every fiber of a
blanket. Finally, write an equation that proves why a dead month can’t be cured.
The Memory Problem
A boy aims a dying flashlight at a lake. Each splash he finds is reordered. Next,
he uses a rose to decode the columns in the water. How long will the rust take to
colonize the flashlight once the boy lets it fall to the ground? What is it that
makes him suddenly imagine a field of tired accordions waiting for a cautious
hand?
