Around Two thousand five hundred years ago, a Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, invented the Pythagorean Theorem. The Theorem was related to the length of each side of a right-angled triangle. In a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse, the side opposite to the right angle, equals to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. (148, Poskitt) To know more about this famous theorem, we can look at the other forms of the Pythagorean Theorem, such as it can also be written as c^2-a^2=b^2 which is for reverse operations like finding side b with the data of a and c. Meanwhile, the proofs of the theorem can make us understand more about the invention of the theorem and how Pythagoras figured it out. And with the invention of this theorem, we shall look into where this theorem was used in these days and how important it is.
Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician born nearly two thousand and sixty years ago. He loved maths when he was very young and spent his whole time investigating maths. He found that “In a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse, the side opposite to the right angle, equals to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” (148, Poskitt)
He proved that all right-angled triangles worked with this theorem
c a a^2+b^2=c^2
b
To calculate the length of the hypotenuse, we can simply square each of the perpendicular sides a and b and add them together. Afterwards, we have to root the answer (√c), which is the reverse of square. That means, the theorem can also be written as√(〖(a〗^2+b^2 ))=c. This equation means you first add the square of a" and " b, root it, then it would equal c, which is exactly the same as the original form of the theorem.
H...
... middle of paper ...
...d triangle. It is an equation a^2+b^2=c^2 but also can be turned into different forms like √(〖(a〗^2+b^2 ))=c or even take a^2 and write as b^2=c^2-a^2. With the algebraic equations the length of each side of an right-angled triangle can easily be calculated. Meanwhile, there are a lot of ways to proof the Pythagorean Theorem, they were all invented by different mathematicians aroung the world at different time, and can proof the theorem using squares, rectangles, trapezium, circles and much more shapes. There are over three hundred proofs currently. With all these different proofs we can believe that the theorem is most likely correct. Moreover, the Pythagorean Theorem can help architects and contruction workers, or even geologists in different ways to help their calculations be easier. The Pythagorean Theorem is very important on the whole in the mathematics world.
Through history, as said before, many philosophers have supported and developed what Pythagoras first exposed to the world. One of the most important philosophers to support Pythagoras’s ideas was Plato. In some of his writings he discusses the creation of the universe based on the musical proportions discovered by Pythagoras (Timaeus), and the explanation of the sound emitted by the planets, which is exposed in the “Myth of Er” in The Republic. It talks about a man who died and came back to life who narrates how he saw the space and how, in every “sphere,” there was a being singing constantly, each one in a different tone, so a perfect harmony was built. Nevertheless, not everyone agreed with this theory, being one of its most important critics Aristotle, who claimed that Plato’s arguments where false in his text On the Heavens. He acknowledges that it is a creative and innovative theory, but it is absurd to think that such music, which is imperceptible to us, exists in a harmonic way up in the heavens. I am not going to go deeper into that for it is not relevant for the text. As the years went on, many people continued developing this theory. Nevertheless, this philosophical theory, not truly explained until later on, was an inspiration for many artists and that is why not only philosophers but many other artists mention and base their works upon this theory.
Geometry, a cornerstone in modern civilization, also had its beginnings in Ancient Greece. Euclid, a mathematician, formed many geometric proofs and theories [Document 5]. He also came to one of the most significant discoveries of math, Pi. This number showed the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle.
Greek mathematics began during the 6th century B.C.E. However, we do not know much about why people did mathematics during that time. There are no records of mathematicians’ thoughts about their work, their goals, or their methods (Hodgkin, 40). Regardless of the motivation for pursuing mathematical astronomy, we see some impressive mathematical books written by Hippocrates, Plato, Eudoxus, Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, Hipparchus, Heron and Ptolemy. I will argue that Ptolemy was the most integral part of the history of Greek astronomy.
One of the most well known contributors to math from Greece would be Archimedes. He
Here Pythagoras, better known as a mathematician for the famous theorem named for him, applied theoretical mathematics and the theory of numbers to the natural sciences (Nordqvist, 1). Pythagoras equated the duration of the lunar cycle to the female menstrual cycle and related the biblical equation of infinity as the product of the number seventy and forty to the normal length of pregnancy at 280 days (Nordqvist, 1). More practical, Pythagoras also contributed the idea of medical quarantine to the practice of medicine setting a forty-day period standard quarantine to avoid the spread of disease. While Pythagoras chose the number forty for its perceived divine nature his practical application of a quarantine must have been based on the observation that in some instances disease spreads through contact. The concept of Quarantine is still in use to this day and is an example of how Pythagoras contributed to modern medicine even while his methods were based on “mystical aspects of the number system” Pythagoras and his followers did “attempt to use mathematics to quantify nature” and as a result, medical practice (Ede, Cormack,
Many years ago, in 355 CE to be exact, Hypatia was born. Hypatia is one of the world’s most well known mathematicians. Especially for her time, Hypatia was extremely bright and made many important discoveries and contributions to mathematics. Hypatia’s improvements shaped mathematics, and how we see them today. Hypatia's early life, accomplishments, and effects, and end of her life, all have importance and have shaped the world in mathematics.
The mathematicians of Pythagoras's school (500 BC to 300 BC) were interested in numbers for their mystical and numerological properties. They understood the idea of primality and were interested in perfect and amicable numbers.
Pythagoras held that an accurate description of reality could only be expressed in mathematical formulae. “Pythagoras is the great-great-grandfather of the view that the totality of reality can be expressed in terms of mathematical laws” (Palmer 25). Based off of his discovery of a correspondence between harmonious sounds and mathematical ratios, Pythagoras deduced “the music of the spheres”. The music of the spheres was his belief that there was a mathematical harmony in the universe. This was based off of his serendipitous discovery of a correspondence between harmonious sounds and mathematical ratios. Pythagoras’ philosophical speculations follow two metaphysical ideals. First, the universe has an underlying mathematical structure. Secondly the force organizing the cosmos is harmony, not chaos or coincidence (Tubbs 2). The founder of a brotherhood of spiritual seekers Pythagoras was the mo...
Euclid, who lived from about 330 B.C.E. to 260 B.C.E., is often referred to as the Father of Geometry. Very little is known about his life or exact place of birth, other than the fact that he taught mathematics at the Alexandria library in Alexandria, Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy I. He also wrote many books based on mathematical knowledge, such as Elements, which is regarded as one of the greatest mathematical/geometrical encyclopedias of all time, only being outsold by the Bible.
Trigonometry is the branch of mathematics that is based on the study of triangles. This study helps defining the relations between the different angle measures of a triangle with the lengths of their sides. Trigonometry functions such as sine, cosine, and tangent, and their reciprocals are used to find the unknown parts of a triangle. Laws of sines and cosines are the most common applications of trigonometry that we have used in our pre-calculus class. Historically. Trigonometry was developed for astronomy and geography as it helped early explorers plot the stars and navigate the seas, but scientists have been using it for centuries for other purposes, too. Besides other fields of mathematics, it is used in physics,
...bsp;Using Analytic Geometry, geometry has been able to be taught in school-books in all grades. Some of the problems that are solved using Rene’s work are vector space, definition of the plane, distance problems, dot products, cross products, and intersection problems. The foundation for Rene’s Analytic Geometry came from his book entitled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason in the Search for Truth in the Sciences (“Analytic Geomoetry”).
Trigonometry is one of the branches of mathematical and geometrical reasoning that studies the triangles, particularly right triangles The scientific applications of the concepts are trigonometry in the subject math we study the surface of little daily life application. The trigonometry will relate to daily life activities. Let’s explore areas this science finds use in our daily activities and how we use to resolve the problem.
There are many people that contributed to the discovery of irrational numbers. Some of these people include Hippasus of Metapontum, Leonard Euler, Archimedes, and Phidias. Hippasus found the √2. Leonard Euler found the number e. Archimedes found Π. Phidias found the golden ratio. Hippasus found the first irrational number of √2. In the 5th century, he was trying to find the length of the sides of a pentagon. He successfully found the irrational number when he found the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle. He is thought to have found this magnificent finding at sea. However, his work is often discounted or not recognized because he was supposedly thrown overboard by fellow shipmates. His work contradicted the Pythagorean mathematics that was already in place. The fundamentals of the Pythagorean mathematics was that number and geometry were not able to be separated (Irrational Number, 2014).
The 17th Century saw Napier, Briggs and others greatly extend the power of mathematics as a calculator science with his discovery of logarithms. Cavalieri made progress towards the calculus with his infinitesimal methods and Descartes added the power of algebraic methods to geometry. Euclid, who lived around 300 BC in Alexandria, first stated his five postulates in his book The Elements that forms the base for all of his later Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al’Khwarizmi, was born abo...
Many mathematicians established the theories found in The Elements; one of Euclid’s accomplishments was to present them in a single, sensibly clear framework, making elements easy to use and easy to reference, including mathematical evidences that remain the basis of mathematics many centuries later. The majority of the theorem that appears in The Elements were not discovered by Euclid himself, but were the work of earlier Greek mathematician such as Hippocrates of Chios, Theaetetus of Athens, Pythagoras, and Eudoxus of Cnidos. Conversely, Euclid is generally recognized with ordering these theorems in a logical ...