Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Bluff City News

School is almost over for another year and students are busy taking their final exams, so I thought this would be a good time to give a test.

I have a copy of an old grammar school arithmetic book copyrighted in 1909. Some of the problems given in this book are very interesting (and difficult). There is a section in the book called Ordinary Affairs which has problems about such things as electric lights, roofing, farming, brickwork, scaling logs, cutting hay, figuring interest, and many other things that had practical application back at that time. See if you can answer the five questions below taken from this book. Remember, this was a grammar school textbook.

1. A rectangular field is 120 rods long and 80 rods wide. How many boards, each 10 ft. long, will enclose it with a fence five boards high?

2. If the length of man's step is 2 feet, 8 inches, how many steps does he take in walking two miles?

3. A lady, on being asked her age, said: "3 years is 7<% of my age. What was her age?

4. The subtrahend is 594 and the remainder is 846. What is the minuend?

5. The "Cannon Ball" ran from Benton to Memphis, a distance of 144.65 miles, in 2 hrs. and 45 minutes. What was its rate per hour?

A thought: The trouble with bucket seats in car these days is that not everyone has the same size bucket.