From tony@math.sunysb.edu Fri Feb 11 13:51:38 2000 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 13:50:14 -0500 (EST) From: Tony Phillips To: Bill Casselman Cc: Tony Phillips Subject: Re: see below On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Bill Casselman wrote: > Have you looked at > > http://www.math.utsa.edu/ecz/ak001.html > Yes I just came back from interlibrary loan where I requested copies of his and Bromley's articles. > and subsequent pages? > > There are a couple of fascinating things in it. > One of them is that his explanation of differential gearing > seems to me quite confusing. Good fodder for your column, > I would guess, and my drawings. > Right!! I claim that essentially nobody understands differentials. I'm pretty smart and good at visualization but I still don't feel completely comfortable with the mechanism. I'd like to have the column focus just on differential gears: this is the conceptually (vs. technologically) amazing part of the Antik. Device as I see it. Goals: A: have the reader grok how the differential works. B: reacquaint the public with this mind-blowing bit of the history of science. (Isn't this your period? As I remember all you got from Harvard was Mary, a good math education and an encyclopedic knowledge of mediterranean history 5BC-5AD). If you are interested in a Java-animation process (as I hope you are) you should know the exact numbers of teeth in the A.D.'s differential. (from Price TAPS reds: 48 & 48 green: 192 blues: 32, 64, 32 colors as in my illustration which seems to have turned out upside-down with respect to Price: my "top" is his "back".) I'll sketch out a column on the golden-mean proof and you can see what you think. Tony From tony@math.sunysb.edu Fri Feb 25 09:16:39 2000 Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:14:34 -0500 (EST) From: Tony Phillips To: cass@math.ubc.edu Cc: Tony Phillips Subject: visualX.html I have reordered the material to make it less nugatory (is that the word I want? -ugly critter). Please have a look.