Monday, October 29, 2007

Newsletter

Egyptian was one of the first civilizations to use mathematics. Their system was derived from base ten because of the number of their fingers and toes. Later in their years the Greeks used the abstract qualities of math. However the Egyptians were only concerned with the practical aspects of numbers. The Egyptians would need to concrete items such as the number six. The Egyptian used numbers that was represented by symbols. A rod was represented the number one and a heal bone stood for ten. They many different symbols for many different numbers. Their number system worked very well when they were doing addition or subtraction. When they were doing addition and subtraction they had to put the numbers in a particular order to solve the problem. When it came to multiply the Egyptians faced using their system. Instead of multiplying the Egyptian would double one of the numbers and add the numbers that was being doubled to equal to the other portion of the problem. If the Egyptians wanted to multiply 52 by 14 they would add 52+ 52=104.Then they would add 104+104which equal to 208. Next they add 208+208, which was 416. They knew to stop when they add 208+208 because they knew that 8 doubled was16 and 16 was lager than 14. They would add 8+4+2 which was14. Then they add 416+208+104 together and that was 728, so the answer was 728.
When the Egyptians were dividing they would double their numbers until they reached the number or they were close to the number. For an example if they wanted to divide 132 by 11 then they would add 11 by 11, which was 22. Then they would double 22, which is 44. Next they doubled 44, which was 88. The number 88 doubled was 176, which was lager than 132. So they add 44 and 88 together, which was 132. Four plus eight is 12, so 52 divided by 14 is 12.

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