History Of Mathematics

The book I read to research this post was The History Of Mathematics A Very Short Introduction by Jacqueline Stedall which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is part of a series of around 300 titles where they take an academic subject and get an expert to write around 150 pages on it. This book looks at the subject in a very general way. It doesn’t tell you how calculus was invented. The development of mathematics hasn’t been a continous process with much rediscovery of things taking place. Having said that the mathematics of the Renaissance didn’t work in seclusion and often had access to the works of the ancient Greeks which were in print and other works by mathematicians in the same era. Current mathematical development has been on a gradual increase since this era. The greatest mathematician is probably Pythagoras with his various theorems which weren’t proved until much later. His theory on that the sides of a triangle could be worked out by having 3 squares and working out the square root of each was worked out in that precise manner by Euclid in the 17th Century. Women have mostly historically been excluded from the field of mathematics. There have been exceptions though like various members of the royal families. I did enjoy this book and would definitely recommend it. It isn’t too technical and it’s worth remembering the greatest mathematicians often spent years producing their theorems.

The History and Practice Of The Art Of Photography

The book I read to research this post was The History and Practice of The Art Of Photography by Henry Hunt Snelling which is a very good book that I downloaded for nothing from kindle. This book was published in 1849 and is a history of what was then a recent discovery invented in 1827 by Niepce. It was a British invention like a lot of things in that era. I think this book is quite a classic probable a bit less applicable to our world of technology but never the less interesting. It was known to the early alchemists that light reacted with silver compounds that made it go lighter or darker which is what photography is based on. In this book he uses things like bromide paper and silver chloride with the basic principles being that forms of bleach are added that only react with the silver compound when light is present making it lighter in those areas. Initially photography was thought to be useful for photographing the sun. Later Samuel Morse the inventor of morse code saw an application in doing portraits. Of dark places at this time photography was still useless and people like historians sometimes still had to draw things like antiquities in dark places. This book is 78 pages and there is information on the old methods of developing and taking photos. I think there is still something called a Camera Obscura in the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth which is quite a tourist attraction and is a room that is also a giant pinhole camera. People go into the room and can see an inverted scenic view of outside projected on a wall. It is made dark and light comes through a small hole achieving this effect. I very much enjoyed reading this book and would definitely recommend it.

Mind Amplifier

The book I read to research this post was Mind Amplifier by Howard Rheingold which is a very good book that I bought on kindle. This book was on kindle singles which means it was quite short and is a bit of a niche subject on how science and evolving so that eventually human intelligence will be enhanced by gadgets. It is a kind of history lesson starting with speaking, writing and using tools which has helped set us apart from animals. Don’t forget dolphins and whales have larger brains than us and it is thought they can talk and apes sometimes use tools. What sets us apart is the accumulated way knowledge develops. We had the industrial revolution in the 18th century when a method of making coke, blast furnaces and steel was developed. We now in an age partly triggered in America at least by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 which resulted in eventual development of the Arpanet and then the internet. America didn’t want to be left behind in the arms or space race. Computers developed to do applications people couldn’t possibly foresee at that time. We also have Moore’s Law where computing power doubles every two years. When you buy a new computer you normally buy one with at least double the capabilities as the old one. When we had Hurricane Katrina they developed the Katrina People Finder Wiki so people could trace surviving friends and relatives. We have a whole plethora of social media sites where everything conceivable can be reviewed and rated. This book is an interesting history although it doesn’t look at how they are going to develop our intelligences with technology. It’s probably too soon to tell. I did enjoy this book and would recommend it.

 

Railways: Mechanical Engineering

The book I read to research this post was Railways: Mechanical Engineering by JB Snell which is a very good book that I bought at a local secondhand bookstore. This book is around 170 pages so is a reasonable length and was published in 1971 so is probably out of date publication wise. It is a carefully written guide to the workings and technologies of steam trains. The lathe apparently despite following simple principles was only developed in the 19th century and before that was turner which were about as precise as a potters wheel. In early steam trains the cylinders had to be arranged to balance the load from each other so that as one hit an idle stroke another would be at the power stroke. There was a simple remedy which was the weighted flywheel. Prior to this engines had to be well off the ground because cylinders would have to start below the camshaft. Another development was changing from a single boiler which got too hot to lots of pipes which conveyed the pressure more efficiently. Especially as engines got longer and more powerful the single boilers days were numbered although George Stephenson who built the first commercial steam train The Rocket was a firm stickler to this old technology. Heating in carriages took a long time to be able to be implemented economically. Queen Victoria had an early heated carriage as well as flushing toilet. Passengers were usually given a hot water bottle at the station on cold days and the trains were notorious for being cold to travel on. Very early trains had wooden wheels and even tracks that wore out quickly mostly on mining railways. Later on iron wheels, then flanged wheels and steel wheels were developed which wore out less frequently. Prior to flanged wheels they relied on weighted wheels providing traction and keeping them on the rails. The Rocket’s driven wheels weighed 2  1/4 tons each.  I did enjoy this book and it is certainly an interesting subject.

Nuclear Terrorism

The book I read to research this post was Nuclear Terrorism by Graham Allison which is an excellent book which I bought from a local bookstore. This book is about the possibilities of nuclear attacks by terrorist organizations which in theory could put even the attacks on the World Trade Center in the shade. According to this book it is more a question of when than if. In Chechnya Soviet forces found a so called dirty bomb before it could be detonated and that is currently the closest we have come to a nuclear terrorist attack. A dirty bomb is any kind of nuclear waste that is in a container along with an explosive that helps spread it around. With a dirty bomb there wouldn’t be many immediate deaths although years later people would succumb to things like cancer as a result. It would cost a lost a lot of money to clear up the nuclear waste and render the area safe though. There is a much greater chance of terrorists building a dirty bomb than using a nuclear warhead as many sites like hospitals house radio-active material that could potentially be used. When the Soviet Union disintegrated many nuclear weapons went missing and almost certainly some of these must either be in terrorist hands or countries with terrorist connections. It’s interesting that not a single nuclear weapon that disappeared in this way has been recovered. A 10 megaton nuclear weapon set off in central New York would probably result in 1 million deaths not counting those who would die of things like cancer much later. There have been cases where terrorists have demanded a ransom in exchange for not setting off a nuclear weapon and these have been hoaxes luckily. There are countries like North Korea & Iran who have nuclear power stations and have a nuclear weapons capability. Most of the information on how to build a nuclear power station is freely accessible and anyone with the money can probably develop a nuclear capability in 5-10 years. This book is very disturbing but is on a brilliant subject and is really well written and is a reasonable length at around 240 pages.

 

Commercial Aircraft

The book I read to research this post was Commercial Aircraft by Michael J Taylor which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book was published in 1983 so is quite dated but is good as a round up of the various fields that comprise commercial aircraft. When this book was published the idea of budget airlines flying to lesser airports and having it subsidized by them and passing it on to the passengers as cheap airfares hadn’t been conceived. Boeing’s offerings had only reached the 767 and air transport worldwide was in decline. Small short and medium range aircraft operating for small airlines were very popular and these companies had loads of orders which is probably still the same. Aircraft like the islander were an example of this aircraft that did very well. The first jet airliner was the De Havilland Comet that even did routes like London to Johannesburg and often reduced the flying time by about 60%. Some of these Comets did have crashes so they were withdrawn and by the time the problems were sorted out the Boeing 707 was released and sold over 900 aircraft which is a huge amount. They only sold 112 Comets by comparison. Another type of aircraft is cargo aircraft and with these it is less important how fast the plane travels. In fact in many cases cargo aircraft are retired passenger aircraft that have been modified. You can have combined passenger and cargo aircraft which are frequently small and you often see this in poorer countries or routes that don’t get many passengers like island routes. Another type of airplane is agricultural aircraft and there is even one with a turbofan although with these speed is usually unimportant and more important factors are rate of climb and manouvreability.  The first airlines were operated in Germany by airships around the turn of the 20th century and of course there was a big accident with the Hindenburg in America when the Hydrogen that made it fly caught alight. The first airlines operated by aircraft were in America and after World War 1 in around 1919 there was a wave of airlines because they were lots of ex airforce pilots looking for work and lots of surplus military aircraft. These aircraft had a very limited passenger capacity but the price of an air ticket gradually got reduced.

Nuclear Safety

The book I read to research this post was Nuclear Safety by Gianni Petrangelli which is an excellent book which I read at

http://safaribooksonline.com

This book is about the safety measures in place primarily in nuclear power stations in the western world although it does contrast it with places like Chernobyl. It also looks at some of the accidents they have had like with 3 Mile Island & Sellafield. The earliest example of a nuclear reactor was built in 1942 and was basically inserting caesium rods into a mass of uranium and pushing the rods further in to increase power and withdrawing them to reduce. That type of producing nuclear power is called fission and that type of nuclear power station was called a fermi pile. In fact even though there have been advances in power station technology that is the basic system of how they work. Most nuclear stations are built to withstand an impact of a fighter jet collision and because at one time they had concerns over crashes with Lockhead F104 Starfighters they are the standard one it has to withstand. Hardly any power stations would withstand a collision with a Boeing 747 as it would have to be built deep underground & they are considered much less likely to crash. In the incident at Chernobyl a new device had just been installed and they reduced the power to an unacceptably low amount, not realising it was dangerous as part of testing it. The power station worked at an optimal amount that they shouldn’t have devated from. Most nuclear power certainly in the west are built to withstand a moderate eathquake and even a nuclear explosion from a nearby missile. Much of the construction is reinforced concrete and the reactor is normally built in a shell within a shell called a safety cage for added protection. I really enjoyed reading which is around 420 pages and contains no less than 17 appendixes. It’s also a very interesting subject in it’s own right.

Magnetism

The book I read to research this post was Magnetism A Very Short Introduction by Stephen J Blundell which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I think is intended as an introduction to magnetism but does go in a lot of detail and I enjoyed reading it. Magnetism was discovered a thousand years ago in China when it was discovered that a rock called magnetite was naturally magnetic and it was used in compasses. At first it was thought it pointed to celestial north but later it was discovered it points to a magnetic north pole north of Canada. The Earth is like a huge but weak magnet complete with its own electric field. An experiment many school children do in school is sprinkle iron fillings around a magnet and it shows the magnetic field of the magnet. Magnet is connected to electricity for example if you wrap wire around the right kind of metal you can turn it into an electro magnet which only works when electricity is passed through it. All magnets have a north and south pole but it is thought that with the research at the Hadron Collider that single pole magnets are expected to be found. This is a kind of huge underground cylindrical tunnel where charged particles are sent around at high speed and experiments on the basic composition of matter are done.

Dinosaurs

The book I read to research this post was Dinosaurs A Very Short Introduction by David Norman which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Dinosaurs were first recognized for what they were in 1847. Prior to that people just thought they were rock abnormalities. It did revolutionize how people thought about the history of the world & we know Darwin was aware of this discovery when he was coming up with his theory of evolution which took it a step further. The ages of the when the dinosaurs lived were normally named after where dinosaurs from that period were first discovered. Hence we have names like the devonian period & the pennsylvanian period. Fossils tend to be be found at sites that yield coal deposits partly because they are obviously mining the coal and obviously as the rock is broken up and removed coal miners find them & also because it’s soft rock. When they had the Great Exhibition in London the people who built the huge exhibition hall out of glass didn’t want it to go to waste and it was resited at Sydenham and became Crystal Palace. They then had a dilemma about what to display in there and some bright spark came up with the idea of models of authentic dinosaurs. This helped educate people about that wasn’t generally known at the time and brought it to prominence.

 

Warships

The book I read to research this post was Warships by Mark Dartford which is a very good book that I bought from a carboot sale. This book is interesting and contains a lot of fascinating information but at 32 pages is rather short and a lot of it is pictures. Warships were made of wood and had canvas sails until the 19th century. Then gradually they started being made of iron and being steam powered. In the early years ships fired iron cannon balls but they became armour plated the weapons had to be upgraded to cope. There is a case during the American Civil War when 2 heavily armoured ships but with inferior weapons met and a 3 hour battle during which neither ship sank and in the end they called it a draw and both ships sailed off. In the US Navy most ships are classified either as Cruisers which displace more than 10,000 tons of water, destroyers which displace between 10-5,000 tons of water & frigates which displace between 2-5,000 tons of water. There is a move in the US Navy towards replacing frigates which are limited in what they can do by there size, with cruisers and destroyers. Of course an exception to that classification is aircraft carriers which are much bigger than any of these. Many warships nowadays carry cruise missiles and also missiles that can shoot down an incoming aircraft or missile. Many ships also have a helipad to help hunt submarines more effectively. We are also seeing ships with a modular construction to save money. Parts of one ship are the same as on another of a different model. This is even happening in ships in different navies. Finally the US Navy is building Zumwalt land attack destroyers which are named after an ex admiral. They use stealth technology and are low lying in the water to avoid attack. These ships can be used to land troops on land during a war.