HighFour History of Mathematics
Category B: Grades 6 – 8
Round 7
Friday, March 11, 2016
The use of calculator is not required.
Answer #1
Explanation:
Rene Descartes
Ever since he was young, Descartes had been in poor health. His doctor’s
recommendation was that he should spend his mornings in bed.
Unfortunately, Queen Christina he was tutoring had an insatiable urge to
study at 5 o’clock in the morning in her cold and draughty castle. Descartes
soon caught pneumonia and died at the age of 54 in 1650.
Answer #2:
Explanation:
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and
has been credited as the founder of the movement called Pythagoreanism.
Answer #3
Explanation:
100
A googol is 10 raised to the power of 100, which is a number starting with 1
and followed by 100 zeroes. A googol is larger than the number of
elementary particles in the universe, which is estimated to be only 10
raised to the power of 80.
Answer #4
Explanation:
Charles Lutwidge Dobson
His most famous writings are Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, its sequel
Through the Looking-Glass, and the poem The Hunting of the Snark, all
examples of the genre of literary nonsense.
Answer #5
Explanation:
Archimedes
Archimedes drew a very large circles and then regular polygons around it.
He started with 12-sided figures, then polygons with 24 sides, 48 sides and
finally with 96 sides. The small arc lengths approximated to straight lines so
the value of pi could be related to the radius of the circle. The numbers may
seem an odd choice but exactly six chords of length equal to the radius fit
exactly inside the circle. Continually halving the chords leads to the number
12, 24, 48, and 96, that Archimedes used.
HighFour History of Mathematics
Category B: Grades 6 – 8
Round 7
Friday, March 11, 2016
The use of calculator is not required.
Answer #6
Explanation:
March 14
Answer #7
Explanation:
Stephen Hawking
In 2006 Hawking posed an open question on the Internet: "In a world that
is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human
race sustain another 100 years?", later clarifying: "I don’t know the answer.
That is why I asked the question, to get people to think about it, and to be
aware of the dangers we now face."
Answer #8
Explanation:
220 and 284
Answer #9
Explanation:
25.4 mm
Historically an inch was also used in a number of other systems of units.
Traditional standards for the exact length of an inch have varied in the past
but since July 1959, when the international yard was defined as 0.9144
meters, the international inch has been determined as exactly 25.4 mm.
Answer #10
Explanation:
Paul Erdos
This had first been proved by Bertrand in 1700s but Erdos’ solution is more
elegant and thus has become famously associated with the theorem.
HighFour History of Mathematics
Category B: Grades 6 – 8
Round 7
Friday, March 11, 2016
The use of calculator is not required.
Answer #11
Explanation:
cone
More precisely, a cone is a solid figure bounded by a base in a plane and a
surface formed by the locus of all straight line segments joining the apex to
the perimeter of the base. The term “cone” sometimes refers to just the
surface of this solid figure, or just to the lateral surface.
Answer #12
Explanation:
3, 5, 11
The subsequence begins with 3, 5, 11, 17, 31, 41, 59, 67, 83, and so forth.
Answer #13
Explanation:
Heron
√ (
The formula for the area is
and are the sides of the triangle and
)(
)(
), given that , ,
.
Answer #14
Explanation:
Ursa Minor aka Little Bear aka Little Dipper
Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation in the northern
sky. Like the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the
handle of a ladle, hence the North American name, Little Dipper: seven
stars with four in its bowl like its partner the Big Dipper. It was one of the
48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and
remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
Answer #15
Explanation:
Leonard Euler
Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician
and engineer who made important and influential discoveries in many
branches of mathematics like infinitesimal calculus and graph theory while
also making pioneering contributions to several branches such as topology
and analytic number theory.
HighFour History of Mathematics
Category B: Grades 6 – 8
Round 7
Friday, March 11, 2016
The use of calculator is not required.
Answer #16
Explanation:
Emmy Noether
She was a German Jewish mathematician known for her landmark
contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics.
Answer #17
Explanation:
Pythagorean triples
The smallest such set of numbers is 3, 4, 5 as
Answer #18
Explanation:
100
In the Roman system, I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, and M =
1000. One of the rules in this system is that the same symbol cannot be
used more than three times in a number.
Answer #19
Explanation:
parallelepiped
In geometry, a parallelepiped is a three-dimensional figure formed by six
parallelograms. By analogy, it relates to a parallelogram just as a cube
relates to a square or as a cuboid relates to a rectangle.
Answer #20
Explanation:
August Ferdinand Mobius
He is now mostly remembered for his discovery of the one-sided surface
called Mobius strip, which is formed by taking a rectangular strip of paper
and connecting its ends after giving it a half twist.
.