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Question P6 Seeing it move

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Folding angle — find x

Gizelle has a rectangular piece of paper. She folded it along the dotted line (the diagonal, from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner) as shown. At the bottom-right corner, the angle between the right-hand edge of the paper and the folded-over edge is 38 degrees, and x is the angle between that folded edge and the crease. Find angle x.

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About this method

Seeing it move

Work out where the pieces land after a fold, cut or stack.

In this one. A fold is a reflection in the crease, so the crease bisects the angle between an edge and its folded image — the angle a folding edge makes with the crease survives the fold unchanged.

ABCDEFa straight strip of three: the two ends land opposite

How to spot it

Words like 'folded', 'cut along the dotted line' or 'stacked' appear beside a shape, and the question asks for a length or angle that only makes sense once the pieces are in their new positions.

Common mistake

Children try to calculate the answer before working out where the pieces actually end up, skipping the visualisation step that the whole question depends on.

Practise a similar question

Challenging Ravi has a square piece of canvas of side 31 cm. He cuts along the dotted lines to get one small square of area 289 cm² and 8 identical right-angled triangles. Triangle XYZ is one such triangle. Find the length of XY.
All 8 with this pattern →
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