manfred mouse fell inside a box of toy blocks. to escape, he needs to build a stairway with the blocks. for manfred to escape, the stairway must be 8 blocks high. he starts with 8 blocks for the bottom step. for the next step, he lays 7 blocks atop the first set of blocks. if he continues this pattern how many blocks will he need in all to build the staiway?

Wont the average be(8-1)*8/2=28 blocks.

Count them to check.

6+5+4+3+2+1=21 blocks

To find out how many blocks Manfred will need to build the entire staircase, we can observe the pattern of the number of blocks he uses for each step.

In the given scenario, he starts with 8 blocks for the bottom step. For the next step, he lays 7 blocks atop the first set of blocks. From this, we can determine that for each subsequent step, he will use one less block compared to the previous step.

Following this pattern, we can list the number of blocks used for each step:
Step 1: 8 blocks
Step 2: 7 blocks
Step 3: 6 blocks
Step 4: 5 blocks
Step 5: 4 blocks
Step 6: 3 blocks
Step 7: 2 blocks
Step 8: 1 block

Now, we can add up the number of blocks used for each step to find the total number of blocks Manfred needs to build the staircase:
8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 36 blocks.

Therefore, Manfred will need a total of 36 blocks to build the staircase and escape.