Science in Early Modern Europe
Early modern science: Tycho Brahe (He looks funny because his nose got cut off in a duel and he wore a false one made of brass.) New observatories in Europe [...]
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08, 2017
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08, 2017
René Descartes – European philosophy
René Descartes Who was Descartes? René Descartes was one of the earliest philosophers of the European Enlightenment, in the early 1600s AD. He was just 8 years younger than Hobbes. While Descartes [...]
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08, 2017
Medieval science in Europe
Medieval science: an Italian pharmacy jar, about 1400 AD (Metropolitan Museum, New York) Learning from Islamic science During the Middle Ages, the best scientists and doctors weren't in Europe. They were [...]
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07, 2017
Numbers and math
A number line is infinite in both directions. Numbers are a convenient way for people to organize their thoughts about space and time. First we can think of zero as a point, taking up no [...]
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07, 2017
Geometry made easy!
Geometry: This is an equilateral trangle. What is geometry? The simplest geometric idea is the point, and then the line, the plane, and the solid. Shapes like circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles are flat, and we can think of [...]
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07, 2017
What is algebra? Math made simple
Simple equations on a graph Algebra is the way Islamic mathematicians figured out to connect our ideas about geometry with our ideas about numbers. You can use equations to represent geometric shapes. You can [...]
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07, 2017
Simple equations – Algebra
Simple equations on a graph Start by thinking of a number line When we learn to add and subtract, multiply and divide, we think of numbers as being all along the number line. But in algebra we think about numbers as [...]
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07, 2017
Number plane project – Battleship
A game of Battleship A fun way to practice plotting points on the number plane is to play Battleship. You will need two pieces of graph paper, two pencils, and two kids. Each kid [...]
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07, 2017
Medieval Islamic mathematics
Indian numbers and medieval Islamic mathematics Indian numbers About 630 AD, just before the Islamic empire got started, people in West Asia learned from traders or traveling scholars about "Arabic" numbers. Indian mathematics The invention [...]
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07, 2017
Medieval Islamic science
Medieval Islamic science: Al Tusi's diagram of linear motion from circular motion Indian and African science In the Early Middle Ages, before the formation of the Islamic Empire, Buddhists ran the world's biggest [...]
