Analysis Of Michael Guillen's Five Equations That Changed The World

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Michael Guillen, the author of Five Equations that Changed the World, choose five famous mathematician to describe. Each of these mathematicians came up with a significant formula that deals with Physics. One could argue that others could be added to the list but there is no question that these are certainly all contenders for the top five. The book is divided into five sections, one for each of the mathematicians. Each section then has five parts, the prologue, the Veni, the Vidi, the Vici, and the epilogue. The Veni talks about the scientists as a person and their personal life. The Vidi talks about the history of the subject that the scientist talks about. The Vici talks about how the mathematician came up with their most famous formula. …show more content…

The first person in the book was Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was a man that had deep depression and mostly kept to himself. If not for that quality he may not have made the discoveries that he did. He would often sit in the garden for hours on end just thinking and formulating his ideas about the universe. In fact, that is the very place where the ideas of gravity and centrifugal force first came to him. He noticed an apple fall, and wondered why the apple fell to the earth but the moon didn’t. The main discovery that Newton is credited with is the Universal Law of Gravitation. In the prologue, the book describes how this equation told scientists in NASA how to escape gravity and leave the earth to go to the moon. The Universal Law of gravitation is a fundamental law of the world today. In the second chapter, Michael Guillen writes about …show more content…

Clausius made a series of discoveries that led up to the discover of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the equation the “changed the world”. First, Rudolf Clausius discovered that anywhere, everywhere, the total of all the energy in the universe is constant. Each form of energy can be turned into another. He also noticed that heat naturally flows from hot to cold, it only goes cold to hot using artificial means. He called this lopsided temperature change entropy. He wondered if all the changes in entropy would also be constant. That was not the case. He noticed in steam engines that the amount of heat going from hot to cold always exceeded the amount of heat going from cold to hot. He tested all kinds of objects with his entropy ideas and over and over again he noticed a net increase in entropy. He then devised this formula to explain this idea Suniverse0, which means that the amount of entropy in the universe is always greater than 0. This was a major breakthrough for many reasons. It gave a reason why everything aged and died. He compares the universe to a casino in which the gamblers make money, but they lose as well. As long as the casino makes more money than the gamblers, the casino stays in business. This is the same idea in the universe. As long as matter ages and dies, the universe exists. As heat begins to flow from hot to cold, it creates many lukewarm regions. Eventually, the universe will become one uniform

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