# Problems from Another Time

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

A woodcutter starts to fell a tree 4 feet in diameter, and cuts half way through. One face of the cut is horizontal, and the other face is inclined to the horizontal at an angle of 45 degrees. Find the volume of the wood cut out.
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 mina. What was the weight of the stone?
How a translation of Peano's counterexample to the 'theorem' that a zero Wronskian implies linear dependence can help your differential equations students
A wooden log is encased in a wall. If we cut part of the wall away to a depth of 1 inch...
A man agreed to pay for 13 valuable houses worth $5000 each, what the last would amount to, reckoning 7 cents for the first, 4 times 7 cents for the second, and so on, increasing the price 4 times on each to the last. A father left$20,000 to be divided among his four sons ages 6, 8, 10, and 12 years respectively so that each share placed at 4 1/2 compounded interest should amount to the same value when its possessor becomes the age 21.
Discussion of 15th century French manuscript, with translation of its problems, including one with negative solutions
Having been given the lengths, a and b, of two straight lines drawn from the acute angles of a right triangle to the middle of the opposite sides, determine the length of those sides.
Given a right triangle where you know the length of the base and the sum of the perpendicular side and the hypotenuse.

A mouse is at the top of a poplar tree 60 braccia high, and a cat is on the ground at its foot. The mouse decends 1/2 a braccia a day and at night it turns back 1/6 of a braccia.