Adventures in Mathematics


Book Description

Written for high school and college mathematics teachers and their students, as well as a general audience, this book discusses concepts such as positive integers, rational numbers, real numbers, complex numbers, polynomials, algebra, two- and three-dimensional geometry and topology.




Motion Mountain - Vol. 1 - The Adventure of Physics


Book Description

How high can animals jump? What are the fastest thrown balls? How fast can aeroplanes and butterflies fly? What does the sea level tell us about the sun? What are temperature and heat? What is self-organization? This free colour pdf on introductory physics guarantees to be entertaining, surprising and challenging on every page. The text presents the best stories, images, movies and puzzles in mechanics, gravity and thermodynamics - with little mathematics, always starting from observations of everyday life. This first volume also explains conservation laws and the reversibility of motion, explores mirror symmetry, and presents the principle of cosmic laziness: the principle of least action. This popular series has already more than 160 000 readers. If you are between the age of 16 and 106 and want to understand nature, you will enjoy it! To achieve wonder and thrill on every page, the first volume includes the various "colour of the bear" puzzles and the "picture on the wall" puzzle, explains about the many types of water waves, introduces the art of laying rope, tells about the the dangers of aeroplane toilets, explores the jumping height of different animals, presents the surprising motion of moguls on skiing slopes, explains why ultrasound imaging is not safe for a foetus, gives the ideal shape of skateboard half-pipes, estimates the total length of all capillaries in the human body, explains how it is possible to plunge a bare hand into molten lead, includes a film of an oscillating quartz inside a watch, includes the "handcuff puzzle" and the "horse pulling a rubber with a snail on it" puzzle, explains how jet pilots frighten civilians with sonic superbooms produced by fighter planes, presents the most beautiful and precise sundial available today, shows leap-frogging vortex rings, tells the story of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, mentions the world records for running backwards and the attempts to break the speed sailing record, and tells in detail how to learn from books with as little effort as possible. Enjoy the reading!




Everywhere and Everywhen


Book Description

This book, written for the general reader, explores the fundamental issues concerning the nature of time and space, and quantum mechanics. It shows how physics and philosophy work together to answer some of the deepest questions ever asked about the world.




Alex's Adventures in Numberland


Book Description

A tenth anniversary edition of the iconic book about the wonderful world of maths Sunday Times bestseller | Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 'Original and highly entertaining' Sunday Times 'A page turner about humanity's strange, never easy and, above all, never dull relationship with numbers' New Scientist 'Will leave you hooked on numbers' Daily Telegraph In this richly entertaining and accessible book, Alex Bellos explodes the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, and demonstrates the remarkable ways it's linked to our everyday lives. Alex explains the surprising geometry of the 50p piece, and the strategy of how best to gamble it in a casino. He shines a light on the mathematical patterns in nature, and on the peculiar predictability of random behaviour. He eats a potato crisp whose revolutionary shape was unpalatable to the ancient Greeks, and he shows the deep connections between maths, religion and philosophy. From the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany to numerologists in the US desert, from a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan to venerable Hindu sages in India, these dispatches from 'Numberland' are an unlikely but exhilarating cocktail of history, reportage and mathematical proofs. The world of maths is a much friendlier and more colourful place than you might have imagined. This anniversary edition is fully revised and updated.




Adventures of a Mathematician


Book Description

The true story that inspired the 2020 film. The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects. With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.




A Day's Adventure In Math Wonderland


Book Description

Math Wonderland is a museum of interactive mathematical models in Hokkaido, Japan, founded by one of the authors, Jin Akiyama, in 2003. The models in Wonderland, many of which have been exhibited all over Japan and in cities around the world, are meant to help children and young adults discover and experience the wonders of mathematics.This book is centered around the experiences of three fictional middle-school students during a visit to Wonderland. They spend a day in Wonderland, handling the interactive models and participating in the activities offered there. At the end of the day, they leave with a genuine appreciation of mathematics gained from witnessing its beauty, applicability and inevitability.The book is an important contribution to the genre because it presents mathematics and models that have never before appeared in books in the same category: reversible solids, plane tiling with developments of tetrahedrons, and double-packable solids, which are derived from the authors' own research papers published in mathematics journals. It is designed to entertain, inform and even teach some mathematics. Although it is targeted at young adults, parents and teachers may learn something from the book as well.




Wonders of Numbers


Book Description

Who were the five strangest mathematicians in history? What are the ten most interesting numbers? Jam-packed with thought-provoking mathematical mysteries, puzzles, and games, Wonders of Numbers will enchant even the most left-brained of readers. Hosted by the quirky Dr. Googol--who resides on a remote island and occasionally collaborates with Clifford Pickover--Wonders of Numbers focuses on creativity and the delight of discovery. Here is a potpourri of common and unusual number theory problems of varying difficulty--each presented in brief chapters that convey to readers the essence of the problem rather than its extraneous history. Peppered throughout with illustrations that clarify the problems, Wonders of Numbers also includes fascinating "math gossip." How would we use numbers to communicate with aliens? Check out Chapter 30. Did you know that there is a Numerical Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? You'll find it in Chapter 45. From the beautiful formula of India's most famous mathematician to the Leviathan number so big it makes a trillion look small, Dr. Googol's witty and straightforward approach to numbers will entice students, educators, and scientists alike to pick up a pencil and work a problem.




Adventures in Theoretical Physics


Book Description

During the period 1964-1972, Stephen L. Adler wrote seminal papers on high energy neutrino processes, current algebras, soft pion theorems, sum rules, and perturbation theory anomalies that helped lay the foundations for our current standard model of elementary particle physics. These papers are reprinted here together with detailed historical commentaries describing how they evolved, their relation to other work in the field, and their connection to recent literature. Later important work by Dr. Adler on a wide range of topics in fundamental theory, phenomenology, and numerical methods, and their related historical background, is also covered in the commentaries and reprints. This book will be a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in the fields in which Dr. Adler has worked, and for historians of science studying physics in the final third of the twentieth century, a period in which an enduring synthesis was achieved.




Birth of a Theorem


Book Description

In 2010, French mathematician Cédric Villani received the Fields Medal, the most coveted prize in mathematics, in recognition of a proof which he devised with his close collaborator Clément Mouhot to explain one of the most surprising theories in classical physics. Birth of aTheorem is Villani's own account of the years leading up to the award. It invites readers inside the mind of a great mathematician as he wrestles with the most important work of his career. But you don't have to understand nonlinear Landau damping to love Birth of aTheorem. It doesn't simplify or overexplain; rather, it invites readers into collaboration. Villani's diaries, emails, and musings enmesh you in the process of discovery. You join him in unproductive lulls and late-night breakthroughs. You're privy to the dining-hall conversations at the world's greatest research institutions. Villani shares his favorite songs, his love of manga, and the imaginative stories he tells his children. In mathematics, as in any creative work, it is the thinker's whole life that propels discovery—and with Birth of aTheorem, Cédric Villani welcomes you into his.




What is Quantum Mechanics?


Book Description