In the Geiger-Muller tube, particles ionize gas atoms. The tube contains a gas at low pressure. At one end of the tube is a very thin “window” through which charged particles or gamma rays pass. Inside the tube is a copper cylinder with a negative charge. A rigid wire with a positive charge runs down…
In modern society, radio is the most widely used medium of broadcasting and electronic communication: it plays a major role in many areas such as public safety, industrial manufacturing, processing, agriculture, transportation, entertainment, national defense, space travel, overseas communication, news reporting, and weather forecasting. In radio broadcasts, they use radio waves which can be both…
Chromium is a very hard, brittle, gray metal, which is sometimes referred to as Siberian red lead. It does not rust easily and becomes shiny and bright when it is polished. The shiny trim on our automobile bumpers and door handles is usually electroplated chromium. Most chromium comes from something called chromite which is a…
Charles Babbage may have spent his life in vain, trying to make a machine considered by most of his friends to be ridiculous. 150 years ago, Babbage drew hundreds of drawings projecting the fundamentals on which today’s computers are founded. But the technology was not there to meet his dreams. He was born on December…
How Wind Tunnels Work A wind tunnel is a machine used to fly aircraft, missiles, engines, and rockets on the ground under pre-set conditions. With a wind tunnel, you can choose the airspeed, pressure, altitude, and temperature to name a few things. A wind tunnel is usually has a tube-like appearance with which wind is…
Zeno of Elea was born in Elea, Italy, in 490 B.C. He died there in 430 B.C., in an attempt to oust the city’s tyrant. He was a noted pupil of Parmenides, from whom he learned most of his doctrines and political ideas. He believed that what exists is one, permanent, and unchanging. Zeno argued…
Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz are two of the most supreme intellects of the 17th century. They are both considered to be the inventors of Calculus. However, after a terrible dispute, Sir Isaac Newton took most of the credit. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and statesman born in the…
Trigonometry uses the fact that ratios of pairs of sides of triangles are functions of the angles. The basis for mensuration of triangles is the right-angled triangle. The term trigonometry means literally the measurement of triangles. Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that developed from simple measurements. A theorem is the most important result in…
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984), known as P. A. M. Dirac, was the fifteenth Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933 with Erwin Schrodinger.[2] He is considered to be the founder of quantum mechanics, providing the transition from quantum theory. The Cambridge Philosophical Society awarded him the…
Leonhard Euler, (born April 15, 1707, died Sept. 18, 1783), was the most prolific mathematician in history. His 866 books and articles represent about one third of the entire body of research on mathematics, theoretical physics, and engineering mechanics published between 1726 and 1800. In pure mathematics, he integrated Leibniz’s differential calculus and Newton’s method…
Georg Cantor founded set theory and introduced the concept of infinite numbers with his discovery of cardinal numbers. He also advanced the study of trigonometric series and was the first to prove the nondenumerability of the real numbers. Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 3, 1845. His family…
The Fibonacci numbers were first discovered by a man named Leonardo Pisano. He was known by his nickname, Fibonacci. The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence in which each term is the sum of the 2 numbers preceding it. The first 10 Fibonacci numbers are: (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89).…
Geometry was thoroughly organized in about 300 BC, when the Greek mathematician Euclid gathered what was known at the time, added original work of his own, and arranged 465 propositions into 13 books, called ‘Elements’. The books covered not only plane and solid geometry but also much of what is now known as algebra, trigonometry,…
Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont, Auvergne, France on June 19, 1628. He was the son of Étienne Pascal, his father, and Antoinette Bégone, his mother who died when Blaise was only four years old. After her death, his only family was his father and his two sisters, Gilberte, and Jacqueline, both of whom played…
Apollonius was a great mathematician, known by his contempories as “The Great Geometer, “whose treatise Conics is one of the greatest scientific works from the ancient world. Most of his other treatises were lost, although their titles and a general indication of their contents were passed on by later writers, especially Pappus of Alexandria. As…
Ancient knowledge of the sciences was often wrong and wholly unsatisfactory by modern standards. However, not all of the knowledge of the more learned peoples of the past was false. In fact, without people like Euclid or Plato, we may not have been as advanced in this age as we are. Mathematics is an adventure…
Gauss, Carl Friedrich (1777-1855). The German scientist and mathematician Gauss is frequently he was called the founder of modern mathematics. His work is astronomy and physics is nearly as significant as that in mathematics. Gauss was born on April 30, 1777 in Brunswick (now it is Western Germany). Many biographists think that he got his…
Satanism is the religion of the flesh. Happiness, to the Satanist must be found here and now. No heaven exists to go to after death and no Hell of burning punishment awaits the sinner. Strongly attached to our family and close associations, we make excellent friends. Satanists do not believe that you can love everyone…
Marshland is covered with grasses, reeds, sedges, and cattails. These plants all have their roots in soil covered or saturated with water and its leaves held above water. Marshes may be freshwater or salt. Freshwater marshes develop along the shallow edges of lakes and slow-moving rivers, forming when ponds and lakes become filled with sediment.…
Many people today, including scientists and doctors, are questioning the suffering and killing of animals for the sake of human beings. Is it morally correct to dissect a frog or a worm for the purpose of educating a high school student? On the other hand, must “We study life to protect life” (1:131) The issue…