Did you know that Voltaire was the first to publish the legend of Isaac Newton discovering gravity upon seeing an apple fall? That he tried for about eight years to be a mathematician. That in 1752 he wrote Micromegas, a story about a French expedition to the arctic (1736-7) whose purpose was to test Newton’s controversial theories about gravity? This book is about that story and its underlying mathematics.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Editions-Typ
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Maße
Höhe: 238 mm
Breite: 159 mm
Dicke: 29 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-88385-345-0 (9780883853450)
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Andrew Simoson earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics under Leonard Asimow at the University of Wyoming in 1979, working on extensions of separating theorems in functional analysis. Since then, he has been chairman of the mathematics department at King College in Bristol, Tennessee, and has authored over thirty papers in various mathematical journals. He has twice been a Fulbright professor, at the University of Botswana, 1990-91, and at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, 1997-98.
Contents
Introduction
Vignette I. A dinner invitation
I. The annotated Micromegas
Vignette II. Here be giants
2. The micro and the mega
Vignette III. The Bastille
3. Fragments from flatland
Vignette IV. A want-to-be mathematician
4. Newton's polar ellipse
Vignette V. A bourgeois poet in the temple of taste
5. A mandarin orange or a lemon?
Vignette VI. The zodiac 1
6. Hipparchus's twist
Vignette VII. Love triangles
7. Durer's hypocycloid
Vignette VIII. Maupertuis's hole
8. Newton's other ellipse
Vignette IX. The man in the moon
9. Maupertuis's pursuit curve
Vignette X. Voltaire and the almighty
10. Solomon's pi
Vignette XI. A Laputian tree
11. Moon pie
Vignette XII. A last curtain call
12. Riddle resolutions
Appendix
Cast of characters
Comments on selected exercises
References
Index.
