In his study of humane methods of hanging, Samuel Haughton (1866) considered the earliest recorded account of execution by hanging (see Haughton’s Drop on this site). In the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, Homer described how the twelve faithless handmaids of Penelope “lay by night enfolded in the arms of the suitors” who were vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage. Her son Telemachus, with the help of his comrades, hanged all twelve handmaids on a single rope.
Continue reading ‘Samuel Haughton and the Twelve Faithless Hangmaids’
changed by one part in a million.
. Although the angular momentum did not change, the rotation axis moved in the body frame. The nut continued to flip back and forth, although there were no forces or torques acting on it.
, 
, 
using the integral
the amplitude and wrote 
. It can be difficult to understand what motivated his definitions. We will define the elliptic functions 
of a real variable, we often have to find the values of 
for which the function is zero. A simple iterative method was devised by Isaac Newton and refined by Joseph Raphson. It is known either as Newton’s method or as the Newton-Raphson method. It usually produces highly accurate approximations to the roots of the equation 
.
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For many decades, a search has been under way to find a theory of everything, that accounts for all the fundamental physical forces, including gravity. The dictum “physics is geometry” is a guiding principle of modern theoretical physics. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which emerged just one hundred years ago, is a crowning example of this synergy. He showed how matter distorts the geometry of space and this geometry determines the motion of matter. The central idea is encapsulated in an epigram of John A Wheeler:
From cheetahs chasing gazelles, through coastguards saving shipwrecked sailors, to missiles launched at enemy aircraft, strategies of pursuit and evasion play a role in many areas of life (and death). From pre-historic times we have been solving such pursuit problems. The survival of our early ancestors depended on their ability to acquire food. This involved chasing and killing animals, and success depended on an understanding of relative speeds and optimal pursuit paths.
, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. We review several historical methods and describe a recently-discovered and completely original and ingenious method.
