View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what century did Archimedes live?

2. Which of the following best describes Archimedes as discussed by Dunham?

3. Besides being a mathematician, what else other work was Archimedes famous for?

4. What did Hippocrates do that advanced mathematical methods?

5. That properties of specific shapes were early Egyptians aware of?

Short Essay Questions

1. Summarize, in a sentence, what was Hippocates's great theorem, and what was it based on according to Dunham?

2. How did Heron find the area of a triangle, and what did Dunham state about Heron's work?

3. Describe the events that follow del Ferro's death between Fior and Tartaglia.

4. Describe why Dunham infers that Euclid's Elements was an evolutionary book not so much for what it said, but in how it was presented.

5. Explain who was Gerolamo Cardano, and how did he become involved with the solution to the cubic.

6. Describe in two sentences Archimedes's method for determining circular area.

7. Describe Euclid's definition of prime numbers and the relationship he stated as existing between prime and composite numbers.

8. Describe the ancient city Alexandria and name a few of its third century geniuses.

9. Describe who was Archimedes and how Dunham described his character.

10. What was already known about circles before Archimedes?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay to explain what is meant by "infinitude of primes." Use the following questions to guide your writing. What was Euclid's definition of a prime number? How were prime and composite numbers related according to Euclid?

Essay Topic 2

Summarize the parts of Euclid's Elements. Use the following questions to guide your writing. What were the basic components to Elements? What were the most important theorems and proofs in Elements? How did Elements change the future of mathematics. Name a few mathematicians after Euclid who used Elements in their own work.

Essay Topic 3

Explain the accuracy of Archimedes determination of pi. How did he determine the number value of pi? How accurate is Archimedes's measurement of pi? What other mathematician was able to determine a number value, though more accurate, for pi?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 909 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample