Year 9 Maths turn back time

By Mark Hooper | Posted: Sunday May 29, 2022

9B students inscribing operations into clay tablets using four different based number systems.

The boys have been learning about the first known number system in use in human history - Sexagesimal, base 60 used by the Sumerians in the area around modern day Iraq (about 4000 to 6000 years ago). 

This requires 60 different symbols for the numbers 0 to 59. This ancient civilisation used clay dug out from the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The boys then repeated their operations using binary (Base 2 - vital for operations of computers), followed by our very familiar decimal system (Base 10) and finally a base system the boys made up themselves. 

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