Heavenly Mathematics The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry Free Download
Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry
Author: Glen Van Brummelen | Language: English | ISBN: B00ANHDZ8O | Format: PDF
Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry Description
Spherical trigonometry was at the heart of astronomy and ocean-going navigation for two millennia. The discipline was a mainstay of mathematics education for centuries, and it was a standard subject in high schools until the 1950s. Today, however, it is rarely taught. Heavenly Mathematics traces the rich history of this forgotten art, revealing how the cultures of classical Greece, medieval Islam, and the modern West used spherical trigonometry to chart the heavens and the Earth. Glen Van Brummelen explores this exquisite branch of mathematics and its role in ancient astronomy, geography, and cartography; Islamic religious rituals; celestial navigation; polyhedra; stereographic projection; and more. He conveys the sheer beauty of spherical trigonometry, providing readers with a new appreciation for its elegant proofs and often surprising conclusions.
Heavenly Mathematics is illustrated throughout with stunning historical images and informative drawings and diagrams that have been used to teach the subject in the past. This unique compendium also features easy-to-use appendixes as well as exercises at the end of each chapter that originally appeared in textbooks from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
- Product Details
- Table of Contents
- Reviews
- File Size: 3588 KB
- Print Length: 216 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press (December 23, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00ANHDZ8O
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,867 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Mathematics > Trigonometry - #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Mathematics > Trigonometry - #16
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Mathematics > Geometry & Topology > General Geometry
The author is so wonderfully entranced and entrancing with this "lost art" that he kindof misses the fact that some of the "old" arts like quaternions (revolving around a world centered on the square root of negative 1 instead of 1!), triangular polygons on surfaces, Napiers pentagon, etc. are being reborn today in the art and craft of modeling, game programming, simulation, digital art and computer graphics (eg. Maya, ZBrush).
Sure, there are now algorithms and calculus functions that "eclipse" the ancient navigational methods, not to mention GPS, but no self respecting GIS teacher can ignore Spherical Trig even today! Wolfram in particular has spent a lot of time tinkering with Java and other applets in spherical trig, and many GIS (Geographical Information Systems) teachers I know will LOVE this text.
This book is really about the beauty of mathematics, and in a Platonic sense, the translation of angular dimensions and fractals into the "real spherical" world not only of planets and stars, but more recently, molecules and RNA folding. If youre a math amateur, youll love the beauty, and the trig is doable with a little review. If youre a pro, you might just find relationships that newer methods have obscured, but give you many "aha" moments about limits and even hyper modern applications like inverse kinematics, joints and robotics that often have to translate angular into circular momentum and are full of what wed call trig functions and ODEs today. Youll love this whether youre doing robotics, or working on prosthetic limbs, as well as the more obvious celestial and navigational applications.