you're my forever and always: Aug 30, 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

CHINESE SCIENCE

BRIEF HISTORY

There has been more or less continuous contact between Europe and China since classical Greek times in spite of the distances between them and their totally different language.

Usually the connection was indirect and restricted to trade in luxury goods.

But even in the classical times there were curious synchronism in philosophical movements in Europe and China

Silk road- an ancient trade routine linking China with Rome.

Important Persons

Marco Polo- whose account of his travels and experiences offered European a firsthand view of Asian lands and Stimulated interests in Asian trade.
Zu Chongzhi- mathematician who calculated "pi" to the 7th digit.
Liu Ju-hsieh- mathematician who discovered "Pascal's Triangle"
Tao Ch'ien- famous poet and philosopher who influenced the ideaof "elixir of life".

Great Inventions

magnetic compass
printing press
gun powder
paper making

Astronomy - first planetarium which was made by an emperor.

Stellar explosion that took place in the "Crab Nebula" in 1054.

Mathematics - Asian abacus, "pi" was calculated to the seventh digit, decimal system, Pascal's
Triangle

Military - Crossbows, poison gases, Bamboo-made cannons, Rockets

Medicine - "Elixir of life" potion, acupuncture, autopsy

Is Astrology considered as a Science?

Astrology is not considered as a science for it has been repeatedly tested and they found out that it has no mutual relationship between the movement of heavens and human lives. Some of the evidence regarding this matter that Astrology is not a Science has been disregarded by its supporters. But the truth is Astrology is really not a Science even it is sometimes related and gives us the knowledge about the natural world and human affairs. In some instance we fall in believing that Astrology is considered as a science because we can use the scientific method to make our conclusion proven. One example is we are thinking for possible answer, we can have one or more possible answers but at the end of this we found out that one is only correct, in relation with with astrology sometimes prediction of our future is considered to be a conclusion but we can only prove it if it will happen.

In science everything has been proven or based on facts or truth. But in Astrology it is only comes in predicting what will happen. Nobody knows it is correct or not. But sometimes this two are confusing, we study the superstitious belief in science but as we go deeper we learn that superstitious belief is a prediction or has no basis.

Some people blamed astrology because of its prediction in human life but the problem is, sometimes we considered astrology as the basis of our daily life. But at the end of this Astrology is still not considered as a science because it is not proven as the study of facts.

Where does the naming Milky Way for our Galaxy come from?

The name Milky Way refers to the milky patch of sky which rings the Earth. You may have seen it if you live outside of a big city, it looks almost like very tenuous clouds to the naked eye. It was named in prehistory before anyone really knew what it was, so just called the "Milky Way" for its appearance. It wasn't until Gallileo looked at an area of it with his telescope in the 1600s that it was realised that the Milky Way was made up of thousands of individual stars, and it was even later that it was realised that what we are looking at is an edge on view of our own galaxy, one of billions in the universe.

An interesting fact related to this is that the word galaxy actually comes from the Greek word, galactos for milk! The Latin version of Milky Way is Via Lactea, with "Via" meaning "Way" or "Road" and "Lactea" meaning "Milk".

What is QUASAR?

· An astronomical object that appears starlike on a photographic plate but possesses many other characteristics, such as a large redshift, that prove that it is not a star.

· The name quasar is a contraction of the term quasistellar object (QSO), which was originally applied to these objects for their photographic appearance. The objects appear starlike because their angular diameters are less than about 1 second of arc, which is the resolution limit of ground-based optical telescopes imposed by atmospheric effects.

· Quasars were discovered in 1961 when it was noticed that very strong radio emission was coming from a localized direction in the sky that coincided with the position of a starlike object. When the positions of small-angular-diameter radio sources were accurately determined, the coincidence with starlike objects on optical photographs led to the discovery of a new, hitherto-unsuspected class of objects, the quasars.

· The color of quasars is generally much bluer than that of most stars with the exception of white dwarf stars.

· The blueness of quasars as an identifying characteristic led to the discovery that many blue starlike objects have a large redshift and are therefore quasars.

THE REASON WHY SCIENCE BLOOM IN THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD

The Renaissance is a transitional period,in the work of the Renaissance all the great nations of Europe shared.The reason why they discovered lots of invention..

These is the time when in the foreground there came out the humanist striving for knowledge, the interest towards the surroundings and most of all a time of the awakened human personality, of the new versatile man. A time when many new sciences were born – ethnography, history, geography, when the freedom of thinking, of personal choice occurred, when the zeal for beauty, self-knowledge and ambition appeared. Meaning to say the people during the Renaissance period are very much curious and more interested to explore their knowledge in order to build a much better invention than before..

PASCAL'S TRIANGLE

In mathematics, Pascal's triangle is a geometric arrangement of the binomial coefficients in a triangle. It is named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in much of the Western world, although other mathematicians studied it centuries before him in India, Persia, China, and Italy.

The rows of Pascal's triangle are conventionally enumerated starting with row 0, and the numbers in each row are usually staggered relative to the numbers in the adjacent rows. A simple construction of the triangle proceeds in the following manner. On row 0, write only the number 1. Then, to construct the elements of following rows, add the number directly above and to the left with the number directly above and to the right to find the new value. If either the number to the right or left is not present, substitute a zero in its place. For example, the first number in the first row is 0 + 1 = 1, whereas the numbers 1 and 3 in the third row are added to produce the number 4 in the fourth row.

What is the importance of studying the history of science

you're my forever and always

jesus saves

Monday, August 30, 2010

CHINESE SCIENCE

history and philosophy of science