The Christmas Present Quandary

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Alexandria Jones hated using store-bought wrapping paper at Christmas. She tried to wrap each present as a hand-crafted work of art.

Last year, she did mini-scenes with plastic figures building cotton snowmen or skating on aluminum-foil ponds — and, for her brother Leonhard’s gift, her favorite creation: toy dinosaurs having a snowball fight. But those 3-D scenes got knocked about under the Christmas tree.

This year, she decided, she would wrap the packages flat. But then, how could she make them special?

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Looking Ahead with Alexandria Jones

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

We have now finished three back issues of my old Mathematical Adventures newsletter. Our next story will be from the November/December 1998 issue: Alexandria Jones and the Christmas Present Quandary. I plan to take a couple of months off to find my rhythm with co-op and homeschooling classes, and we will pick up Alex’s adventures (and meet her mother, Maria Jones) in November.

In case you missed any of them, here are all the Alexandria Jones stories so far…

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Egyptian Math: The Answers

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Remember the Math Adventurer’s Rule: Figure it out for yourself! Whenever I give a problem in an Alexandria Jones story, I will try to post the answer soon afterward. But don’t peek! If I tell you the answer, you miss out on the fun of solving the puzzle. So if you haven’t worked these problems yet, go back to the original posts. Figure them out for yourself—and then check the answers just to prove that you got them right.

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Another Egyptian Math Puzzle

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Pyramids clip artI have one last puzzle for those of you who are following my Alexandria Jones series on hieroglyphic math and the Egyptian scribe’s method of multiplication by doubling. Here is the “teaser” problem from the cover of the Sept./Oct.1998 issue of my newsletter:

One more Egyptian math puzzle (pdf, 53KB)

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Egyptian Math Puzzles

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

What we know about ancient Egyptian mathematics comes primarily from two papyri, the first one written around 1850 BC. Moscow papyrus problem 14This is called the Moscow papyrus, because it now belongs to Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. The scroll contains 25 problems, mostly practical examples of various calculations. Problem 14, which finds the volume of a frustrum (a pyramid with its top cut off), is often cited by mathematicians as the most impressive Egyptian pyramid of all.

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Alex’s Puzzling Papyrus

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

(In the last episode, Dr. Fibonacci Jones discovered a torn scrap of papyrus, covered with hieroglyphic numbers. He promised to teach his daughter, Alexandria, how the ancient Egyptian scribes worked multiplication problems using only the times-two table.)

Back at their tent, Dr. Jones handed the papyrus scrap to Alexandria. “What do you see?” he asked.

“Well, there are two columns of numbers,” Alex said. “Let me write them down.” She got a piece of notebook paper and translated the hieroglyphs. Papyrus fragment

Click on the image for a larger view. Translate the numbers for yourself before reading on. If you need help, read Egyptian Math in Hieroglyphs.

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Egyptian Math in Hieroglyphs

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs, a type of picture writing, and in hieratics, which were like a cursive form of hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphs came first. They were carved in the stone walls of temples and tombs, written on monuments, and used to decorate furniture. But they were a nuisance for scribes, who simplified the pictures and slurred some lines together when they wrote in ink on paper-like papyrus. This hieratic writing — like some people’s cursive today — can be hard to read, so we are only using hieroglyphic numbers on this blog.

Download this page from my old newsletter, and try your hand at translating some Egyptian hieroglyphs:

Then try writing some hieroglyphic calculations of your own.

Edited to add: The answers to these puzzles (and more) are now posted here.

To Be Continued…

Read all the posts from the September/October 1998 issue of my Mathematical Adventures of Alexandria Jones newsletter.

The Thief in the Night

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Alexandria Jones and her faithful dog Ramus slipped out of the tent when the talking started. One of Dad’s assistants had made the long drive into town to bring back pizza for supper. But now, all the adults would be working past midnight to finish the final site report.

Paperwork was necessary, she knew, but so-o-o boring.

Alex and Rammy wandered around the nearly-dark camp. Many of the tents were down. Crates stood near the road. All the artifacts had been carefully cleaned and labeled, and some were already shipped to the museum lab.

She ran a hand over the edge of a crate, then jerked back, wincing at the splinter that dug into her palm.

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Solution: The Cat’s Lasagna

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The puzzle (from The mysterious temporal freeze) was:

A certain famous cat snarfs down an 11″x13″ pan of lasagna in 3 seconds flat. Assuming the fat feline has a bottomless pit for a stomach and continues to eat at the same rate, how long will it take him to devour a pasta the size of the state of Illinois?

Remember the Math Adventurer’s Rule: Figure it out for yourself! Whenever I give a problem in an Alexandria Jones story, I will try to post the answer soon afterwards. But don’t peek! If I tell you the answer, you miss out on the fun of solving the puzzle. Figure it out for yourself — and then check the answer just to prove that you got it right.

Continue reading Solution: The Cat’s Lasagna

The Mysterious Temporal Freeze

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Pyramids clip artAlexandria Jones stepped into the huge tent that protected her father’s excavation site from the desert winds. She laughed to herself. It was like walking into a circus.

She knelt down to whisper in the ear of her faithful dog Ramus. “In this ring, grad students carefully brush away another layer of sand. In the next ring, the artist sketches every piece as it is found.” She waved her arm. “And over there, our flashiest attraction — drum roll, please — the photographers shoot each shard of pottery from every possible angle. But where is the Master of Ceremonies?”

Alex and Rammy found Professor Jones near the back of the tent, talking to another student. While she waited for her dad, she looked through an assortment of numbered artifacts that were ready to be packed and sent to the museum.

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