What was babylonians estimation for square root 3?

346 Views Asked by At

We see a lot of papers and talk about ancient Babylonians exactness of calculating the value of square root of 2. For example: http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/babylon-and-the-square-root-of-2/

But how close could they approximate the value of SQRT3? I have a document that talks about the subject, but I cannot trace the answer directly from it: http://www.helsinki.fi/~whiting/roots.pdf

Maybe someone has knowledge of the method they used and reference to the old Babylonian clay tablets, where it can be verified and seen in use.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

The tablet MS 3051 (Friberg, A Remarkable Collection Babylonian Mathematical Texts) deals with the calculation of the area of an equilateral triangle; the answer given there leads to the simple approximation $\sqrt{3} \approx 7/4$. This does not mean that they couldn't have done better.