I thought i would give it a shot and tried solving it. The eighth problem of the second book of diophantuss arithmetica is to divide a square into a sum of two squares. Some problems of diophantus franz lemmermeyer december 21, 2003. This book features a host of problems, the most significant of which have come to be called diophantine equations. Diophantus of alexandria, arithmetica and diophantine equations.
As a 15 year old student in the netherlands who loves math, i was just casually going through some problems in my text book. Diophantuss arithmetica1 is a list of about 128 algebraic problems with so lutions. Find two square numbers whose di erence is a given number, say 60. Solve problems, which are from the arithmetica of diophantus.
As i was at the end of the chapter about equations linear, quadratic and radical i saw the well known riddle about diophantus s age. The distinctive features of diophantus s problems appear in the later books. Alternative solution for the diophantus age riddle. Some problems from diophantus arithmetica ucr math. This problem became important when fermat, in his copy of diophantus arith. Diophantus of alexandria problem set i convert the. One of the most famous problems that diophantus treated was writing a square as the sum of two squares book ii, problem 8. The problems of book i are not characteristic, being mostly simple problems used to illustrate algebraic reckoning.
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