Seventeen Equations that Changed the World

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But all too often there comes a point in trying to explain the actual equation where he either loses the reader because he is simplifying something to the extent that the explanation isn't an explanation, or because it's hard to get excited about it, unless you are a mathematician. He is an Emeritus Professor and Digital Media Fellow in the Mathematics Department at the University of Warwick, with special responsibility for public awareness of mathematics and science. The book has an admirable focus on the practical applications of science, but some of this is presented with such limited detail that in a couple of places it devolves into lists of applications rather than real explanations.

Ignoring the advice, Hawking included E = mc² even ‘when cutting it out would have sold another 10 millions copies. Stewart, on the whole, does a good job, even if 17 Equations is better suited to those with some basic grounding in mathematical and scientific theory than to readers whose existing knowledge is more, shall we say, Neolithic.Euclid turned geometry into logic by making his basic assumptions explicit and invoking them to give systematic proofs for all of his theorems.

Newton's gravity held up very well for two hundred years, and it was not until Einstein's theory of general relativity that it would be replaced. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to appreciate the poetry and beauty of a good, significant equation. None of these equations emerged in a vacuum, Stewart shows; each drew, in some way, on past equations and the thinking of the day. Tucked away behind the scenes, to be sure - but the influence was there, whether it was noticed it or not. While we take the idea of universal laws for granted today, in earlier eras the idea that the terrestrial and celestial worlds shared the same properties was revolutionary.This observation, along with with Euler's solution to the Bridges of Konigsburg problem , paved the way to the development of topology, a branch of math essential to modern physics. This is not a "book full of maths", and each chapter is largely a textual exploration around the subject starring the featured equation, explaining what it means, and what it led to. They encode information about the real world; they express properties of the universe that could in principle have been very different.

These equations have had a remarkable impact on our lives and our understanding of the universe so it is great that someone is willing to sit down and explain them to us in a way that is not too abstract and technical. History: The initial concept was discovered by the Scottish Laird John Napier of Merchiston in an effort to make the multiplication of large numbers, then incredibly tedious and time consuming, easier and faster. An approachable and informative guide to the equations upon which nearly every aspect of scientific and mathematical understanding depends, In Pursuit of the Unknown is also a reminder that equations have profoundly influenced our thinking and continue to make possible many of the advances that we take for granted. General relativity describes gravity as a curving and folding of space and time themselves, and was the first major change to our understanding of gravity since Newton's law. For example, the base 10 logarithm of 1 is log(1) = 0, since 1 = 10 0; log(10) = 1, since 10 = 10 1; and log(100) = 2, since 100 = 10 2.Also, towards the end of the book, chapters started losing that element of excitement that kept you going through the first chapters. But the verdict of science and technology is that words are too imprecise, and too limited, to provide an effective route to the deeper aspects of reality.

Yet, mathematician Ian Stewart argues in his book In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World, “[e]quations are too important to be hidden away. I had read a description of calculus in another book recently, and this time I think I almost got it.Modern use: Used to compress information for the JPEG image format and discover the structure of molecules. Calculus can be extended to the complex numbers, and by doing so, we find some amazing symmetries and properties of these numbers. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.