A computer-enhanced image of a 1,000-year-old manuscript reveals the faint traces of a copy of Archimedes' Stomachion treatise. It had been overwritten by monks in the 13th century. (Rochester Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University/The Archimedes Palimpsest)
I won't bother creating a dead link to the NYT, but a story by Gina Kolata in the December 14 issue describes how math historians have apparently deciphered Archimedes' Stomachion. Mathematicians have often dismissed the fragments that remain of this work as little more than a description of a children's game similar to the familiar tangram:
You re-arrange these pieces to create these shapes:
Archimedes wasn't trying to make different shapes with the pieces; he "was trying to see how many ways the 14 irregular strips could be put together to make a square.
The answer — 17,152 — required a careful and systematic counting of all possibilities."
What was Archimedes up to? Dr. Reviel Netz of Stanford University received the insight by chance:
It was chance that led Dr. Netz to his first insight into the nature of the Stomachion. Last August, he says, just as he was about to start transcribing one of the manuscript pages, he got a gift in the mail, a blue cut-glass model of a Stomachion puzzle. It was made by a retired businessman from California who found Dr. Netz on the Internet as a renowned Archimedes scholar. Looking at the model, Dr. Netz realized that a diagram on the page he was transcribing was actually a rearrangement of the pieces of the Stomachion puzzle. Suddenly, he understood what Archimedes was getting at.Archimedes was an early master of the field of math called combinatorics.
Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
I will praise the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing. --Psalm 146:1-4 NIV
I will praise the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing. --Psalm 146:1-4 NIV
