29 MAY 2014 by ideonexus

 The Kiss Precise

Four circles to the kissing come, The smaller are the benter. The bend is just the inverse of The distance from the centre. Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb There's now no need for rule of thumb. Since zero bend's a dead straight line And concave bends have minus sign, The sum of squares of all four bends Is half the square of their sum.
Folksonomies: mathematics poetry
Folksonomies: mathematics poetry
  1  notes

If four circles A, B, C, and D, of radii r1, r2, r3, and r4, are drawn so that they do not overlap but each touches the other three, and if we let b1 = 1/r1, etc., then

(b1 b2 b3 b4)^2 = 2(b1^2 b2^2 b3^2 b4^2).

02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Davy Poem Using Laws of Conservation and Thermodynamics

In a thoughtful mood Davy wrote a new kind of metaphysical poem, ‘The Massy Pillars of the Earth. It reflects on the human condition, and suggests that since nothing is ever destroyed in the physical universe, only transformed (the First Law of Thermodynamics), then man himself must be immortal in some spiritual sense. It also returns in a new way to Davy’s early Cornish beliefs about starlight as the source of all energy in the universe: Nothing is lost; the ethereal fire, Which from th...
Folksonomies: science poetry
Folksonomies: science poetry
  1  notes

A poem found in Humphry Davy Works.