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The tunnel of Eupalinos on the Greek island of Samos, over one kilometre in length, is one of the greatest engineering achievements of the ancient world [TM098, or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Approximate course of the tunnel of Eupalinos in Samos.
This week’s That’s Maths column in The Irish Times (TM052, or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com) is about “Samuel Beckett Playing Bridge in Dublin”.
Image from Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival website.
Photo Credit: Ciara Corrigan
Every pure musical tone has a frequency, the number of oscillations per second in the sound wave. Doubling the frequency corresponds to moving up one octave. A musical note consists of a base frequency or pitch, called the fundamental together with a series of harmonics, or oscillations whose frequencies are whole-number multiples of the fundamental frequency.
That’s Maths in the Irish Times this week ( TM024: search for “thatsmaths” ) deals with perspective in art and its mathematical expression as projective geometry.
Spherical trigonometry has all the qualities we expect of the best mathematics: it is beautiful, useful and fun. It played an enormously important role in science for thousands of years. It was crucial for astronomy, and essential for global navigation. Yet, it has fallen out of fashion, and is almost completely ignored in modern education.
Continue reading ‘Pythagoras goes Global’
