Reflection on Assignment 1

 I learned some actual math from this project, not just history. The geometry of a truncated pyramid is not something I had encountered before, so learning about different ways to determine its volume was very interesting. I have even more appreciation for Egyptian mathematics now too: when my group and I were initially starting this problem we defaulted to using representational drawings, which actually proved more difficult to use than the Egyptian-style top-down and sideview images. Historical problems like ours and the ones our classmates solved can provide genuine application questions for our students who are learning various forms of geometry. In our case, the extension we came up with also provides an opportunity more geometrically/algebraically inclined students to flex their muscles, or it could be used as a bonus question or group project.