Egyptian Flooding and the development of
Geometry
You might hear physicists (especially physics professors...
you know who you are) make the claim that mathematics is the
language of physics. Therefore, we can use mathematics to
describe what is going on when we are exploring a physics
question. While this is indeed true, it is not a complete
picture of what happens when a physicist uses mathematics and
it strips mathematics of the credit it deserves for being the
power behind physics.
If mathematics is a language, it is the tank of languages. It
is not only how physics is described, but also the high
powered computing machinery that makes actually doing physics
possible. Consider that without mathematics, physicists could
still describe the basic principles of physics without
mathematics. For example, one can state the principle of
conservation of energy in plain, everyday language. Yet, this
would not be very useful. What can I do with this knowledge?
With the power of mathematics, however, we can both apply
these laws to specific situations and combine and manipulate
these laws to learn new and beautiful things about the world
around us. It is mathematics that not only allows us to write
the concepts of physics in it's sleekest form, but to both
apply and generalize our knowledge! Math opens the doors of
both theory and application!
With that rant out of the way, you may be surprised to learn
that this website will explore the physics of mathematics and
how physics, in some way or another, affected the development
of mathematics. If you'd like to continue on this journey with
me, then please click the "Floods" link on the left!