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Problems from Another Time

Individual problems from throughout mathematics history, as well as articles that include problem sets for students.

Investing in Apples and Pears
A merchant woman buys and sells apples and pears. How much did she invest in apples; how much in pears?
Conic Contents
Determine the greatest cylinder that can be inscribed in a given cone.
Feeling Sluggish
A leech invited a slug for a lunch a leuca away.
A Perfect Cone Sugarloaf
Three persons bought a sugar loaf in the form of a perfect cone 25 inches high and agreed to divide it...what was the slant height of each one's share?
Brazen Lion
I am a brazen lion; my spouts are my 2 eyes, my mouth, and the flat of my foot. My right eye fills a jar in 2 days, my left eye in 3, and my foot in 4.
Logarithms: The Early History of a Familiar Function - John Napier Introduces Logarithms
The authors recount the 'great tale' of Napier's and Burgi's parallel development of logarithms and urge you to use it in class.
Indian Numbers Game
Find a number having remainder 29 when divided by 30 and remainder 3 when divided by 4.
The Chinese General and the River
An old Chinese general led his army to a river with a steep bank. Standing atop the bank, he held a stick 6 feet long perpendicular to himself.
Stone Weight
I found a stone but did not weigh it; after I added to it 1/7 of its weight and then 1/11 of this new weight, I weighed the total at 1 mana. What was the weight of the stone?
Peano on Wronskians: A Translation - Appendix 2: Translations
How a translation of Peano's counterexample to the 'theorem' that a zero Wronskian implies linear dependence can help your differential equations students

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