These gorgeous colorized photos bring famous historical figures to life
It’s truly amazing how much life a bit of color can add to a photograph. Check out the entire gallery here.
Archaeologists unveil the world’s oldest D20
Romans may have used 20-Sided die almost two millennia before D&D, but people in ancient Egypt were casting icosahedra even earlier. Pictured above is a twenty-faced die dating from somewhere between 304 and 30 B.C., a timespan also known as Egypt’s Ptolemaic Period.
Dmitri Mendeleev: Father of the Periodic Table
A Russian chemist and inventor, Mendeleev is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements. Using the table, he predicted the properties of elements yet to be discovered.
After becoming a teacher, Mendeleev wrote the definitive textbook of his time: Principles of Chemistry (two volumes, 1868–1870). As he attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table. Mendeleev was unaware of the other work on periodic tables going on in the 1860s.
Mendeleev was one of the founders, in 1869, of the Russian Chemical Society. He is given credit for the introduction of the metric system to the Russian Empire.
Because I love chemistry…
Wright’s Celestial Map of the Universe, 1742
Thomas Wright was an 18th-Century English astronomer who was credited with being the first to describe the shape of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Versine.
The versine or versed sine, versin(θ), is a trigonometric function equal to 1 − cos(θ) and 2sin2(½θ). It appeared in some of the earliest trigonometric tables and was once widespread, but it is now little-used. There are several related functions, most notably the haversine, half the versine, known in the haversine formula of navigation.
It is also written as vers(θ) or ver(θ). In Latin, it is known as the sinus versus (flipped sine) or the sagitta (arrow).
y = versine(θ)
Ancient jug reveal measuring math secrets of Egyptian living 1500 to 700 BCE
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120604125603.htm
The first ever printed version of the Rhombicuboctahedron was by Leonardo da Vinci, as appeared in the Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli 1509
Teenager Beats Riddle That Baffled Issac Newton … For Over 300 Years Since
Not bad. How about showing Americans kids how dumb they are? Via the Herald Sun:
Shouryya Ray is the first person to work out how to calculate exactly the path of a projectile under gravity and subject to air resistance, The (London) Sunday Times reported.
The Indian-born teen said he solved the problem that had stumped mathematicians for centuries while working on a school project.
Shouryya won a research award for his efforts and has been labeled a genius by the German media, but he put it down to “curiosity and schoolboy naivety.”
“When it was explained to us that the problems had no solutions, I thought to myself, ‘well, there’s no harm in trying,’” he said. Shouryya’s family moved to Germany when he was 12 after his engineer father got a job at a technical college. He said his father instilled in him a “hunger for mathematics” and taught him calculus at the age of six.
Read More: Herald Sun
