Description
Discover the mathematics hidden inside an ordinary coloured map.
Learners replace each region with a vertex and join vertices whose regions share a border. This transforms a visual map-colouring problem into a graph-colouring problem that can be explored systematically.
This lesson introduces:
- turning a map into an adjacency graph;
- proper colourings;
- the chromatic number of a graph;
- finding colourings that use as few colours as possible;
- explaining why fewer colours cannot work;
- the statement and history of the Four Colour Theorem;
- applications such as timetable and scheduling problems.
The download includes the main lesson and a supplementary examples booklet with further problems, answer checks and model solutions.
Suitable for learners aged 10 and over. No previous experience of graph colouring is required.
This is Lesson 5 of the six-part Beyond Curriculum: Graphs course.
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