March 17, 2017 Friday
Bedtime Story
This Obscure William Oughtred is Still With Us Whenever We Multiply
Taking advantage of twin discoveries of his time, namely the
logarithm by Napier and the logarithmic scale by Edmund Gunter (the first
successful analog device), Oughtred created the sliding rule.
I was introduced to the Vernier Caliper in standard 11 in the very
first physics laboratory class.
I was never a bright student and I don’t think I appreciated the
significance of this remarkable measuring analog device.
What I vaguely understood though that it could help me measure
small distances more accurately, to the tune of one-hundredth of a centimeter
or so.
It is only now that I have the leisure and the luxury of not having
to appear for exams and be tested every three months that I have started to
enjoy what I was forcibly made to swallow in the name of teaching.
Vernier Caliper is the classist example of a sliding scale wherein
the moving Vernier scale is spaced at a constant fraction of the main scale.
So in the zero positon, the first mark on the Vernier scale in
one-tenth of the first mark on the main scale, the second mark two-tenth short
and so on.
The ninth mark is misaligned by nine-tenth.
So when you take a measurement, at one time, only one mark will
remained aligned on the Vernier Scale to the main scale.
It is this aligned pair which will give you the precise reading
for the value between the marks on the first scale.
Again I digress but such analog calculating devices are the
origins of what you hold in your hand today that allows you to read my bedtime
stories.
Yet, it is not this sliding rule invention of Oughtred that I
wanted to write about.
In 1631, he published a book called “Clavis Mathematicae” or in
English “The Key to Mathematics”.
It went on to become a classic and was read and used by the likes
of Isaac Newton.
Mathematics until then was not a part of school curriculum.
But soon it began to be.
When that happened, this book became part of the school book
through which the knowledge of mathematics was imparted.
The book was not very extensive, yet it was highly precise when it
came down in enunciating the basics of algebra.
The biggest contribution that Oughtred made through this book was
curtailing the usage of words and invoking symbols in mathematics.
This book gave the modern symbol of multiplication i.e. x,
proportion, and the abbreviations sin and cos for the sine and the cosine
functions.
Thanks to men like Oughtred (he was not the only one), algebraic
notation began to get pretty well established by the end of 1600s.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor
Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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