Related papers: Ancient concrete works
In the present paper I shall clarify that the origin of compound interest goes back 4400 years to Sumer by showing the Sumerian scribe of Enmetena Foundation Cone calculated seventh power of four-thirds.
Brandolini et al. conjectured that all concrete lattice polytopes can multitile the space. We disprove this conjecture in a strong form, by constructing an infinite family of counterexamples in $\mathbb{R}^3$.
One of the recent approaches used to minimize the impacts of the growth of impermeable areas in urban centers is permeable flooring. Permeable floors can be made of concrete and are called permeable concrete. This research aims to analyze…
Robert Stirling's patent for what was essentially a new type of engine to create work from heat was submitted in 1816. Its reception was underwhelming and although the idea was sporadically developed, it was eclipsed by the steam engine…
The European quest for the hard paste porcelain lasted until about 1710, when the first production unit was built at Meissen in Saxony. Although, it is generally believed that Bottger discovered the European porcelain technology, this work…
We describe a geometrical property of helical structures and show how it accounts for the early art of ropemaking. Helices have a maximum number of rotations that can be added to them -- and it is shown that this is a geometrical feature,…
Despite the extensive amount of scholarly work done on Indian mathematics in the last 200 years, the conditions under which it originated and evolved is still not clear. Often, one reads the ancient texts with the present concepts and…
An age-old controversy in mathematics concerns the necessity and the possibility of constructive proofs. The controversy has been rekindled by recent advances which demonstrate the feasibility of a fully constructive mathematics. This…
The study of the mathematics and geometry of ancient civilizations is a task which seems to be very difficult or even impossible to fulfil, if few written documents, or none at all, had survived from the past. However, besides the direct…
Sophisticated computation methods were developed 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia in the context of scribal schools. The basics of the computation can be detected in clay tablets written by young students educated in these scribal schools. At…
Building blocks and tiles are an excellent way of learning about geometry and mathematics in general. There are several versions of tiles that are either snapped together or connected with magnets that can be used to introduce topics like…
In this paper, we chronologically recount several situations that have contributed to the development and formalization of the objects known as imaginary or complex numbers. We will begin by introducing the earliest documented knowing for…
One of the oldest and most enduring myths in human history is the belief that the Parthenon was cleverly designed with various curved structures and sizes in order to correct optical illusions, and therefore appear straight and regular. The…
A novel method is proposed for moving large, pyramid construction size, stone blocks. The method is inspired by a well known introductory physics homework problem, and is implemented by tying 12 identical rods of appropriately chosen radius…
Ceramic based materials covered with a mixture of mullite and zircon on the top, strengthened by the addition of zinc and magnesium compounds at different rates (37 % and 50 %) and made by a co-precipitation method are studied. The…
Roman Empire is renowned for sharp logical design and outstanding building quality of its road system. Many roads built by Romans are still use in continental Europe and UK. The Roman roads were built for military transportations with…
Pebbles (calculos in Latin) are the "bits" used in the Ancients' four function calculator / computer. The Ancient Computer's normal mode is to work with numbers in what we would call exponential notation. Decimal numbers can have up to 10…
Among the first devices used to measure the time we find the sundials and the water-clocks, as told by Vitruvius in his book on the Architecture. The sundials work because of the shadows cast by a rod or pole, the gnomon, on their…
The pedal of a curve in the Euclidean plane is a classical subject which has a singular point at the inflection point of the original curve. The primitive of a curve is a curve given by the inverse construction for making the pedal. We…
Part 1 : For more than two millennia, ever since Euclid's geometry, the so called Archimedean Axiom has been accepted without sufficiently explicit awareness of that fact. The effect has been a severe restriction of our views of space-time,…