May 26, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
According to Ada, Analytical Engine was Capable of Tackling Three-Body Problem
If you recall, which you may very well not,
that Ada Lovelace had mentioned in one of her Notes that the fabrication of the
beautiful woven portrait of Jacquard necessitated the usage of 24,000 punched
cards.
But then she goes on to add that such large
number of punched cards can be dramatically reduced by using the technique of
looping which she then introduces it.
Rearranging operations and using
intelligent loops, she says, would significantly reduce the number of punched
cards, requiring only 3 in operations which at the first instance would seem to
need 330.
She goes on to say that Analytical Engine
would be capable of carrying out immensely complex computations with far greater
accuracy which are currently not computable by the available mechanical
calculators or if possible, then with great room for errors.
One of the complex problems that she
mentions where Analytical Engine would prove to be extremely useful is the
famous three-body problem.
Though you may all know vaguely what this
three-body problem refers to, let me explain to you in greater detail what it
means.
This is going to be one hell of a diversion
from our bedtime stories of logic, mathematics and computer science but it’s a story
so wonderful that not putting it down on paper on pen or rather the word processor
would be a serious crime.
To the physicists, the three-body problem
is merely a special case of n-body problem and the simplest case of the n-body
problem is the two-body problem which has been comprehensively solved.
The origin of n-body problem rests on
astronomy; motion of celestial bodies and of course, the third most important
factor that pervades the entire universe – the gravity.
This problem was perhaps addressed very
indirectly by the Italian explorer, navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
on whose name the Americas came to be named after.
He followed the path of his even greater
predecessor Christopher Columbus and reached central and South America, just a
decade after him, only critical difference being that unlike Columbus in 1492,
he did not mistake the Americas for Asia.
In 1502 he demonstrated, using his
knowledge of the position of the Moon that Brazil and West Indies where he had
set his feet upon, could not be Asia’s eastern outskirts and had to be some
landmass hitherto unknown to Europeans.
To him astronomy and trigonometry were mere
tools to serve his primary purpose of exploration.
It was Galileo Galilei first, more but more
importantly Isaac Newton who being far more concerned about the motion of
planets rather than his own location on this planet Earth, directly took on
this fundamental problem of classical mechanics.
Though the three-body problem that I
introduced here may be alien to you, we all have been introduced to its simpler
version – the two-body problem - in our high schools when we were introduced to
the classical Laws of Motion and gravity.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
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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