Solving ancient algebra using popsicle sticks

Loading player for https://video.vt.edu/media/1_vidmnp2x...

academics 1:11 Solving ancient algebra using popsicle sticks

By:

Spencer Coppage

21 Oct 2025 416

What do ancient China, popsicle sticks, and autumn weather have in common? Math of course! Students in Andy Norton's History of Math class took their lesson outside to explore how ancient Chinese mathematicians solved matrices. Using sidewalk chalk and popsicle sticks, they recreated this early form of linear algebra.

so there's this ancient Chinese problem about different kinds of grain and there's three different kinds of grain and you know about relationships among them and you're supposed to figure out from those relationships how much there is of each type of grain so it's a typical problem like a math major would understand as a linear algebra problem but they were solving that problem just by manipulating popsicle sticks we use popsicle sticks to represent these Chinese rods, which was actually what the Chinese mathematicians would do. They would manipulate these rods, and it's kind of conceptually the same, but you get a better sense of where the idea comes from when you're physically moving the rods, and they used just those physical movements to solve a linear algebra problem. I think it's important for math students to understand where these ideas come from, that mathematics didn't just come out of a vacuum, and also understand that the history of mathematics is unfolding now, that it's based in human activity like the Chinese system for counting.

Academics

Campus Experience

Culture

Impact

Research

Global Impact