Related papers: Huygens and $\pi$
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…
The ratio of the circumference, C, of a circle to its diameter, D, is a constant number denoted by $\pi$ and is independent of the size of the circle. It is known that $\pi$ is an irrational number and therefore cannot be expressed as a…
We reconsider Archimedes' evaluations of several square roots in 'Measurement of a Circle'. We show that several methods proposed over the last century or so for his evaluations fail one or more criteria of plausibility. We also provide…
In his treatise addressed to Dositheus of Pelusium, Archimedes of Syracuse obtained the result of which he was the most proud: a sphere has two-thirds the volume of its circumscribing cylinder. At his request a sculpted sphere and cylinder…
A brief review of the history of the conic sections would not be complete without an exhaustively tolerable account of all the things related to the subject that can be found in the extensive work of the wise Archimedes. There is no strong…
In his 1685 paper "Observationes cyclometricae" published in Acta Eruditorum, Adam Adamandy Kocha\'nski presented an approximate ruler-and-compass construction for rectification of the circle. It is not generally known that the first part…
In this paper we prove the transcendence of $\pi$ using Hilbert's method. We also prove that all points constructible with compass and straightedge have algebraic coordinates. Thus we give a self-contained proof that squaring the circle is…
By employing certain extended classical summation theorems, several surprising \pi and other formulae are displayed.
We use the classical definitions (i) $\pi$ is the ratio of area to the square of the radius of a circle; (ii) $\pi$ is the ratio of circumference to the diameter of a circle, to prove $\pi$'s existence within the purview of Euclidean…
The Scientific Revolution sweeping through seventeenth-century Europe led to unprecedented intellectual and scientific insights and high-profile technological developments. Combined with a significant worldwide increase in naval commerce,…
While geometry with transcendental curves, like the Quadratrix of Hippias and the Spiral of Archimedes, played a significant role in our modern developments of geometry and algebra. The investigation has fallen off in the modern era despite…
Pythagoras' theorem, the area of a triangle as one half the base times the height, and Heron's formula are amongst the most important and useful results of ancient Greek geometry. Here we look at all three in a new and improved light, using…
We illustrate Archimedes' method using models produced with 3D printers. This approach allowed us to create physical proofs of results known to Archimedes and illustrate ideas of a mathematician who is known both for his for his mechanical…
This paper looks at how ancient mathematicians (and especially the Pythagorean school) were faced by problems/paradoxes associated with the infinite which led them to juggle two systems of numbers: the discrete whole/rationals which were…
In this article, I discuss the relationship of mathematics to the physical world, and to other spheres of human knowledge. In particular, I argue that Mathematics is created by human beings, and the number $\pi$ can not be said to have…
A re-calculation of a known family of formulas of PI is carried out, revisiting the old Archimedes' algorithm. This allows to identify a general family equation and three new simple formulas of Pi in terms of the golden ratio PHI in the…
The aim of this paper is to apply an original computation method due to Malesevic and Makragic [5] to the problem of approximating some trigonometric functions. Inequalities of Wilker-Cusa-Huygens are discussed, but the method can be…
In offered work short historical excursus to the classical theory of light is presented: Grimaldi, Fermat, Newton, Huygens, Young, Fresnel, Fraunhofer, and Gauss. The ray analog of wave model of light and Huygens-Fresnel's elementary waves…
Unquestionably the greatest discovery of the Pythagoreans is the existence of incommensurable magnitudes, most probably the incommensurability of the diameter to the side of a square, but there is no agreement among historians of Greek…
Confocal quadrics capture (encode) and geometrize spectral properties of symmetric operators. Certain metric-projective properties of confocal quadrics (most of them established in the first half of the XIX$^{\mathrm{th}}$ century) {\it…