IN HONOUR OF Maths Week, as is our annual tradition, we’re setting our readers some puzzles. Give them a go!
Jack and Jill
The Ancient Greeks made enormous strides in the development of geometry.
The Greek mathematician Euclid works forms the basis for much of traditional geometry, relying on axioms and postulates to develop theorems that described properties and relationships of lines and shapes. Euclid’s Elements was the standard work on geometry for over two thousand years.
Lesser known is Hero of Alexandria who lived in the 1st Century CE and was a mathematician and engineer. While he did give us a useful formula for the area of a triangle, he also came up with a beautifully solution to what is now known as Hero’s problem, which we will pose as follows.
Jack and Jill live in houses some distance apart on the same side of a very straight river. Jack must visit …