Modernizing Archimedes' Construction of $\pi$
History and Overview
2020-09-16 v1 Metric Geometry
Abstract
In his famous work, "Measurement of a Circle," Archimedes described a procedure for measuring both the circumference of a circle and the area it bounds. Implicit in his work is the idea that his procedure defines these quantities. Modern approaches for defining eschew his method and instead use arguments that are easier to justify, but they involve ideas that are not elementary. This paper makes Archimedes' measurement procedure rigorous from a modern perspective. In so doing, it brings a rigorous and geometric treatment of the differential properties of the trigonometric functions into the purview of an introductory calculus course.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2009.06752,
title = {Modernizing Archimedes' Construction of $\pi$},
author = {David Weisbart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.06752},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
25 pages, 14 figures