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Subj:.....Problems
of History (S586)
From the book
"More Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd"
Edited by Martin Gardner
From: Dover Publications in 1960
Arrange the volumnes
to make nine different fractions.
When I was a boy,
I was given nine ponderous volumes of Hume's
History of England,
accompanied by promises galore of guns,
ponies, and everything
else if I would only study those books.
I must confess that
what I don't know about the history of
England would more
than double the size of an ordinary library,
but I did discover
some interesting puzzles based on those
weighty volumes.
I found, for example,
that by placing the volumes on two shelves
as shown in the sketch,
the fraction 6729/13458 is exactly equal
to 1/2. Is
it possible to find other arrangements, using all
nine volumes, that
make fractions equivalent to 1/3, 1/4, 1/5,
1/6, 1/7, 1/8, and
1/9? |