Subject: Re: WOW effect
From: John Chamberlain (chamber@cord.org)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 09:49:39 EDT
At 09:06 AM 5/2/00 -0400, Adam Stinchcombe wrote:
>...why would someone want to prescribe the
>shape of a hanging pendant?
Adam,
To most of us living in the macroscopic world, it often seems a waste of
time to model something we can see and just use. But NASA wouldn't be able
to get a space shuttle up and down in one piece, let alone get a little
spacecraft to orbit 30 miles above the surface of a tiny asteroid millions
of miles away if they couldn't model the effects of nature down to the 15th
significant digit. (When they can't do it right, we get million dollar
probes burning up in a Jovian atmosphere.)
We wouldn't have CAT-Scans and MRI technology, DNA analysis, digital
cellular phones and pocket pagers, etc. etc. if scientists and researchers
hadn't pursued modeling all these things with mathematics. Granted your
typical homemaker or plumber doesn't need such skills to get their daily
work done, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't require certain
mathematics exposure, experience, and even understanding to those who are
seeking to earn a college degree.
I offer an answer to your question (excerpted above): Not one suspension
bridge in the world was built without a precise mathematical understanding
of the shape of Martha's hanging chain. As Abraham (and probably others)
pointed out, that shape is known by engineers and physicists as a caternary.
And BTW, I have NOTHING against homemakers and plumbers! :-)
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