Free-Thinking by Geometry - A Royal Road to Physics – Bill Harter & Dave Wall
If you enjoy free-thinking it is hard to beat what you can think up with a ruler and compass and some graph paper. Two hour-long hands-on sessions separated by a lunch break will explore a unique geometric approach to classical and quantum physics in Bill Harter’s Computer Graphics Studio 241 in UA Physics building on April 1st 10AM-1PM.
Euclid’s Elements or plain-old plane geometry began an extraordinary form of thinking 2,300 years ago. Interrupted by the Dark Ages but then revived during the Renaissance and Enlightenment Period between 300 and 500 years ago, geometry continues to underlie much of our modern science and engineering.
In the meantime, the Arabic world developed algebra before starting its own Dark Ages about when the West’s was ending. In the West there arose a powerful combination of algebra and geometry called analytic-geometry-calculus in the classical mechanics of Newton and later Hamilton, Lagrange, and Poincare.
Sessions
The first session will show a quick way to understand and use classical mechanics of momentum and energy (in that order) by drawing just a few lines and circles on graph paper. We’ll have Superballs©, both real and simulated, to check our theory.
The second session will involve a few more lines and circles, but no more than you would need to diagram a baseball diamond. Only this “baseball diamond” shows how to derive logically and quantitatively the essentials of both relativity and quantum theory!
The key construction for both these developments is a rectangle-inscribed-in-circle arrangement that we call “Euclid’s means” and use as our T-shirt and CD emblem. [1] Euclid’s means are cool. Way cool. In fact, wicked cool! Come see why!
Equipment
Rulers, compasses, drafting pencils and graph paper will be supplied, but if you have a favorite such instrument, that’s OK, too. If you have a scientific calculator you might bring it just to check some of things we’ll be deriving the old Greek way.
RSVP
The graphics studio holds comfortably only about 10-12 desks. So we need to have reservations. Please respond to wharter@uark.edu so we’ll have a count.
© Superball is a trademark of Whammo Mfg. Co.
[1] Euclid’s means are displayed at
www.uark.edu/ua/pirelli/html/means_1.html
See website front page at
www.uark.edu/ua/pirelli/html/title_page.html
or www.uark.edu/ua/pirelli/html/default.html
.
.
DAR
From the above website:
How fast is light? Light goes one foot in a nano-second as explained on the next page. This may seem quite fast to us.
But, on a cosmic scale lightspeed is positively sub-glacial. In your lifetime light cannot cross one pixel (.) of the Hubble photo below.
.
.
.
.