Welcome to H3 Maths

Blog Support for Growing Mathematicians

Posts tagged with clay tablet

Take one tablet a day to become a better mathematician

September7

This is an ancient clay tablet (aka school book) discovered in Babylonia in the second millennium B.C. – some 1000 years before Pythagoras. You will notice that is shows, within the square, an isosceles triangle with a diagonal hypotenuse. The Babylonians understood the relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle, and, in solving for the hypotenuse, […]

by James posted under Uncategorized | tagged under Babylonians, clay tablet, Pythagoras, tablet, tablets, textbook, trig | Comments Off

Post Support

NCEA Level 2 Algebra Problem. Using the information given, the shaded area = 9, that is:
y(y-8) = 9 –> y.y – 8y – 9 =0
–> (y-9)(y+1) = 0, therefore y = 9 (can’t have a distance of – 1 for the other solution for y)
Using the top and bottom of the rectangle,
x = (y-8)(y+2) = (9-8)(9+2) = 11
but, the left side = (x-4) = 11-4 = 7, but rhs = y+? = 9+?, which is greater than the value of the opp. side??
[I think that the left had side was a mistake and should have read (x+4)?]