Math Resources
The Pyramids
Ancient Egypt
produced the last survivors of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the
Pyramids. The Great Pyramid at Giza, which is part of a complex of
Pyramids, is more than 4,500 years old. The Great Pyramid is a monument
on a grand scale. It is estimated that it would have taken 30 years
and 100,000 workers to have built it. It consists of approximately 2,300,000
blocks of stone with an average weight of 2.5 tons each. The total
weight is approximately 6,000,000 tons and the Great Pyramid is approximately
482 feet (140 meters) high. The builders of the Pyramids had knowledge
of geometry and surveying techniques. The Pyramids are nearly perfectly
symmetrical, all sides and angles in the pyramids are built to exact proportions.
The faces of the Pyramids are aligned almost exactly to the points
of the compass. There are even theories that passages in the pyramids
were aligned to the positions of certain stars. Use the following web
resources to learn more about the Pyramids and the people who built them.
Click here for a link to
Nova's Online Pyramid Adventure.
Click here to learn about
Pyramids
and ancient Egyptian
Mathematics in Mark Millmore's Ancient Egypt.
Click here for a page on possible
methods used to construct the Pyramids.
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