Preview

Advanced Calculus

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1598 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Advanced Calculus
HIPPARCHUS (c 190 – c120 BC)

Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer, mathematician and geographer. Surprisingly little is known about his early life. He was most certainly born in Nicaea, Bithynia, (which is now known as Iznik in Turkey), around 190 BC. Most of what we do about him comes from the books of other scholars who came after him, such as Ptolemy and Strabo. It seems likely that Hipparchus studied in Alexandria but spent his later life in Rhodes. Strabo, another Greek geographer writing about eighty years after Hipparchus’ death, describes him as “one of the famous men of Bithynia”. The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who extended some of Hipparchus’ work about two hundred and fifty years later, admired his hard work and his quest for truth.

Hipparchus is recorded has being the first to make a catalogue of stars. He probably made his observations while living in Rhodes, from about 146 BC. He observed 850 stars and graded them according to their brightness. His brightness scale ranged from 1 (the brightest) to 6 (the dimmest). Interestingly enough, Hipparchus scale is still used today! The only difference is that he did not have the luxury of using a telescope. He could only see what we now call 6th magnitude stars (those that are just visible to the naked eye). From an observatory today we can see stars of the 22nd magnitude. Hipparchus also listed the stars in each constellation and noted their positions. Ptolemy continued his work and catalogued another 37 stars, bringing the total to 1080.

Public Domain Image
As a mathematician, Hipparchus is credited with dividing a circle into 360° and being the first to use trigonometry. Using observations during the solar eclipse, probably in129 BC, he was able to work out the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The eclipse at Alexandria had been partial, four fifths of the sun had been covered, but at Syene it had been total. By measuring angles and applying distances between the two cities he was able to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Calculus Exam

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages

    | (0, ∞)Question 8 Find the largest open interval(s) where the function is Increasing y = x4 - 18x2 + 81Answer…

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Ap Calculus

    • 2722 Words
    • 11 Pages

    | A cell reference that refers to cells by their fixed position in a worksheet; an absolute cell reference remains the same when the formula is copied.…

    • 2722 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Calculus Cheat Sheet

    • 2008 Words
    • 9 Pages

    ( log a ( x ) ) = x ln a , x > 0…

    • 2008 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Calculus Project

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Follow-Up: Suppose you are the owner of Saucy Soup Company. You need to present an argument to your board of directors as to what shape soup can your company should sell. Some things to keep in mind:…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    INT1 Task 1

    • 685 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Hipparchus assumed that all of the solar system bodies visible to the naked eye (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Sun Jupiter and Saturn) revolved around the earth in an ellipse pattern (Jones, A.R., n.d.). (O’Connor, 1999) Example Two Ptolemaic Model Circa 100 A.D Rome- A man by the name of Claudius Ptolemy developed the most widely known version of the geocentric model.…

    • 685 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hummanities 3991

    • 2100 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC) was said to be the first known scientific thinker. Thales was both important and extremely influential. He wanted an explanation without turning to supernatural powers. Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology. Other philosophers admired his way of thinking and followed him in attempting to explain substance change, and the existence of the world. Thales had two strong beliefs. They were that that “nature must be understood without the supernatural and that humans are capable of discovering nature’s truths through observation and reason” (Adler 33). He was credited to be the first to bring geometry and astronomy to Greece from Egypt. He was best known for his supposed prediction of a solar eclipse that marked the end of the war. “He was able to change the course of a river so an army could cross it” (Adler 31). He claimed that the earth was a flat disk and that an earthquake was caused by a wave in the water. He identified water as the basis of the universe. Thales set a trend for fundamental…

    • 2100 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Calculus

    • 2150 Words
    • 9 Pages

    1. ht= -4.9t2+ 450, where t is the time elapsed in seconds and h is the height in metres.…

    • 2150 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    astronomy 104

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages

    2. In early history astronomy was heavily tied to religion and so usually the priest were astronomers using the star patterns to interpret what the god were saying. Also they based the star patterns of there agriculture needs. Three major astronomical achievements include the Goseck circle which is very similar stone hedge. Hipparchus developed trigonometry to study the stars. Also the Ptolemaic system was created to track and predict star positions.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Int1

    • 1363 Words
    • 6 Pages

    His knowledge of the angle of elevation of the sun at noon. He based the…

    • 1363 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of his first discoveries was that the apparent angular sizes of the Moon and the Sun are the same, which is why their sizes are in proportion to their distances from the Earth. He also recognized that when there is a half moon, the Sun-Moon-Earth angle is exactly a right angle. This allowed him to determine that the distance from the Earth to the Sun was twenty times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Aristarchus recorded the eclipse time and the lunar orbital period as well, which allowed him to discover that the Moon is one third the size of the Earth, and that the Sun is seven times the Earth. This also allowed him to calculate the distances from the Sun to the Earth and from the Moon to the Earth relative to the diameter of the Earth.…

    • 1604 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Claudius Ptolemy was born C. 100 CE. The size and content of his literary production suggest that he lived until about 170 CE. He was a Greek descent, mathematician, geographer and Egyptian Astronomer. Nothing much is known about Ptolemy’s life apart from what can be anecdotal from his writings. The Major Astronomical work he did was title the Almagest which was completed about 150 CE and contains reports of Astronomical observations that Ptolemy had made over the preceding quarter of a century. Almagest, was called by Ptolemy the mathematical collection because he believed that the heavenly motions could be explained in mathematical terms. Ptolemy was primarily responsible for the geocentric cosmology that prevailed in the Islamic world and…

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos (Cos), and became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. Other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue .Soranus of Ephesus, a 2nd-century Greek gynecologist, was Hippocrates' first biographer and is the source of most information on Hippocrates' person. Information about Hippocrates can also be found in the writings of Aristotle, which date from the 4th century BC, in the Suda of the 10th century AD, and in the works of John Tzetzes, which date from the 12th century AD. Soranus wrote that Hippocrates' father was Heraclides, a physician; his mother was Praxitela, daughter of Tizane. The two sons of…

    • 358 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The reason why I want to learn AP® Calculus AB is first of all, I need a fourth math credit in order to graduate, I need this in order to pursue the career I want to major in. The major I would like to take in college is Computer Science so Calculus is very important to take. There is nothing specific I am looking forward to learning in this course except for learning differential calculus and integral calculus. I hope to achieve an understanding of calculus and to learn how to solve problems by using various methods. For me, the first week went well, however when I was starting some of the assignments on Thursday, some of the assignments were due Friday but they were in different lessons. I had to make sure to complete everything by Friday…

    • 273 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco egyptian writer, he was also known as the mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer,. Ptolemy lived in the city of alexandria in egypt. He was also born in egypt and he lived there his whole life. Ptolemy was also the author of several scientific treatises. The first one he wrote is the astronomical treatise is now known as the almagest.…

    • 63 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Heron's Formula

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The event that I chose to discuss is Heron’s method that was written about in the three book series called metrica discovered in the period of about 60 AD. His formula for calculating the area of a triangle was one of the formulas which was written about in the books. Heron of Alexandria was also very well known by Hero. Their has been much debate on the birth date and ear of when Heron of Alexandria was alive. First people thought that it was around 150BC and the other school of thought was that he lived around 250BC. But later on historians were able to pin point the era that he lived in by one of the events that he wrote about. Heron referred to an eclipse that took place and therefore historians have been able to place the event which occurred at 23:00 hours on 13 March 62.…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics