 This is a mathematical snack from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics. A palindromic number is one which reads exactly the same backwards as it does forwards. I'm going to start with the number 17 and I'm going to reverse that number to make it 71 and add those two together. And as you can see the answer is 88. That is now a palindrome so the number 17 took one addition's calculation for the answer to be palindromic. I'm now going to start with a number 49. Once again I reverse it to 94, add them together and I get 143. 143 is not a palindrome so I start with the number 143 and reverse it to 341 and I add and I get 484. This is now a palindromic number. It's taken two steps or two addition calculations for the number 49 to become palindromic. Have a go at 78, add 87. See how many steps that takes you. Your challenge is to explore how many steps two digit numbers take in order for them to become a palindrome. By the way do be careful with the number 89. This can take very very many steps and you might be working on that particular number for a long time but all the other two digit numbers will produce palindromes after a few steps.