Flatterland

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458716546
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
First there was Edwin A. Abbott's remarkable Flatland, published in 1884, and one of the all-time classics of popular mathematics. Now, from mathematician and accomplished science writer Ian Stewart, comes what Nature calls "a superb sequel." Through larger-than-life characters and an inspired story line, Flatterland explores our present understanding of the shape and origins of the universe, the nature of space, time, and matter, as well as modern geometries and their applications. The journey begins when our heroine, Victoria Line, comes upon her great-great-grandfather A. Square's diary, hidden in the attic. The writings help her to contact the Space Hopper, who tempts her away from her home and family in Flatland and becomes her guide and mentor through ten dimensions. In the tradition of Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Toll Booth, this magnificent investigation into the nature of reality is destined to become a modern classic.

Flatterland

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786723289
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott published a brilliant novel about mathematics and philosophy that charmed and fascinated all of England. As both a witty satire of Victorian society and a means by which to explore the fourth dimension, Flatland remains a tour de force. Now, British mathematician and accomplished science writer Ian Stewart has written a fascinating, modern sequel to Abbott's book. Through larger-than-life characters and an inspired story line, Flatterland explores our present understanding of the shape and origins of the universe, the nature of space, time, and matter, as well as modern geometries and their applications. The journey begins when our heroine, Victoria Line, comes upon her great-great-grandfather A. Square's diary, hidden in the attic. The writings help her to contact the Space Hopper, who becomes her guide and mentor through eleven dimensions. Along the way, we meet Schröger's Cat, The Charming Construction Entity, The Mandelblot (who lives in Fractalia), and Moobius the one-sided cow. In the tradition of Alice in Wonder-land and The Phantom Toll Booth, this magnificent investigation into the nature of reality is destined to become a modern classic.

The Planiverse

Author: A.K. Dewdney
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461301998
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A classic book about life in a two-dimensional universe, written by a well-known author. Now brought back into print in this revised and updated edition, the book is written within the great tradition of Abbott's Flatland, and Hinton's famous Sphereland. Accessible, imaginative, and clever, it will appeal to a wide array of readers, from serious mathematicians and computer scientists, to science fiction fans.

Spaceland

Author: Rudy Rucker
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429980079
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
Joe Cube is a Silicon Valley hotshot--well, a would-be hotshot anyway--hoping that the 3-D TV project he's managing will lead to the big money IPO he's always dreamed of. On New Year's Eve, hoping to impress his wife, he sneaks home the prototype. It brings no new warmth to their cooling relationship, but it does attract someone else's attention. When Joe sees a set of lips talking to him (floating in midair) and feels the poke of a disembodied finger (inside him), it's not because of the champagne he's drunk. He has just met Momo, a woman from the All, a world of four spatial dimensions for whom our narrow world, which she calls Spaceland, is something like a rug, but one filled with motion and life. Momo has a business proposition for Joe, an offer she won't let him refuse. The upside potential becomes much clearer to him once she helps him grow a new eye (on a stalk) that can see in the fourth-dimensional directions, and he agrees. After that it's a wild ride through a million-dollar night in Las Vegas, a budding addiction to tasty purple 4-D food, a failing marriage, eye-popping excursions into the All, and encounters with Momo's foes, rubbery red critters who steal money, offer sage advice and sometimes messily explode. Joe is having the time of his life, until Momo's scheme turns out to have angles he couldn't have imagined. Suddenly the fate of all life here in Spaceland is at stake. Rudy Rucker is a past master at turning mathematical concepts into rollicking science fiction adventure, from Spacetime Donuts and White Light to The Hacker and the Ants. In the tradition of Edwin A. Abbott's classic novel, Flatland, Rucker gives us a tour of higher mathematics and visionary realities. Spaceland is Flatland on hyperdrive! At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sphereland

Author: Dionys Burger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Expanding universe
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description

Why Beauty Is Truth

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465082378
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Physics.

Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651283
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
School maths is not the interesting part. The real fun is elsewhere. Like a magpie, Ian Stewart has collected the most enlightening, entertaining and vexing 'curiosities' of maths over the years... Now, the private collection is displayed in his cabinet. There are some hidden gems of logic, geometry and probability -- like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass (harder than you think), a pop up dodecahedron, the real reason why you can't divide anything by zero and some tips for making money by proving the obvious. Scattered among these are keys to unlocking the mysteries of Fermat's last theorem, the Poincaré Conjecture, chaos theory, and the P/NP problem for which a million dollar prize is on offer. There are beguiling secrets about familiar names like Pythagoras or prime numbers, as well as anecdotes about great mathematicians. Pull out the drawers of the Professor's cabinet and who knows what could happen...

Naming Infinity

Author: Loren Graham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

Math Hysteria

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191647454
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Welcome to Ian Stewart's strange and magical world of mathematics! In Math Hysteria, Professor Stewart presents us with a wealth of magical puzzles, each one spun around an amazing tale: Counting the Cattle of the Sun; The Great Drain Robbery; and Preposterous Piratical Predicaments; to name but a few. Along the way, we also meet many curious characters: in short, these stories are engaging, challenging, and lots of fun!

Concepts of Modern Mathematics

Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486134954
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
In this charming volume, a noted English mathematician uses humor and anecdote to illuminate the concepts of groups, sets, subsets, topology, Boolean algebra, and other mathematical subjects. 200 illustrations.