Today’s Puzzle:

Perhaps you or one of your children will find the Dollar Tree Ball Puzzle in your stocking this year. Such was the case in my family.

A little bit of tugging here and there will help you pull apart this Dollar Tree puzzle ball, but how do you get it back together? After several failed attempts, you might turn to the internet for help. There are several videos showing how to put it back together, but they can be difficult to follow. The colors of the puzzle pieces might not match your ball. Thus, instructions on what to do with the yellow or green piece are not as helpful. People on the videos keep turning the ball so that makes the differences in color even more confusing and requires the videos to be played back over and over again.

Instead of posting yet another video, I decided to post still shots of each step with the Dollar Tree Puzzle Ball maintaining . The colors of your ball may not match the colors here, so match the indentations on your puzzle pieces instead of the colors. Turn your puzzle pieces so the indentations are in the same position as the indentations in the photos.

First 2 pieces: Find the two pieces shaped like these:

Connect them so that together they look like an angel.  Third piece: There are actually two puzzle pieces that are shaped the same. Select one of them.

Put your selected piece below the angel wings on the puzzle. Fourth piece: select the next piece that is shaped like the blue one below. See how the notch will fit over the center of the angel wings perfectly?

Attach it to the puzzle as shown. Notice the two holes in the middle of the puzzle. The one on the left is a rectangle. The one on the right is a square.

Fifth piece: Put the next piece in on the rectangle side with the solid part down. Push it in all the way to the middle.

Sixth piece: Put the last piece in. This is the piece that was identical to the third piece you put in the puzzle.

Push it in all the way to the middle.

Finally, push the bottom piece up to lock the puzzle into place.

Factors of 1570:

This is my 1570th post. Separating the number 1570 into puzzle pieces might seem difficult, but it only has three prime puzzle pieces: 2, 5, and 157. That last one might seem like it should be broken into more pieces, but it can’t be. Putting the puzzle pieces back together is much easier. Just multiply them all together to get 1570.

• 1570 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 1570 = 2 × 5 × 157.
• 1570 has no exponents greater than 1 in its prime factorization, so √1570 cannot be simplified.
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 1, and 1. Adding one to each exponent and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 × 2 = 8. Therefore 1570 has exactly 8 factors.
• The factors of 1570 are outlined with their factor pair partners in the graphic below.

More about the Number 1570:

1570 is the sum of two squares in two different ways:
29² + 27² = 1570, and
39² + 7² = 1570.

1570 is the hypotenuse of four Pythagorean triples:
112-1566-1570, calculated from 29² – 27², 2(29)(27), 29² + 27²,
546-1472-1570, calculated from 2(39)(7), 39² – 7², 39² + 7²
850-1320-1570, which is 10 times (85-132-157), and
942-1256-1570, which is (3-4-5) times 314.