How Round Is Your Circle?: Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet

By John Bryant and Chris Sangwin

Book Overview

How do you draw a straight line? How do you determine if a circle is really round? These may sound like simple or even trivial mathematical problems, but to an engineer the answers can mean the difference between success and failure. How Round Is Your Circle? invites readers to explore many of the same fundamental questions that working engineers deal with every day--it's challenging, hands-on, and fun. John Bryant and Chris Sangwin illustrate how physical models are created from abstract mathematical ones. Using elementary geometry and trigonometry, they guide readers through paper-and-pencil reconstructions of mathematical problems and show them how to construct actual physical models themselves--directions included. It's an effective and entertaining way to explain how applied mathematics and engineering work together to solve problems, everything from keeping a piston aligned in its cylinder to ensuring that automotive driveshafts rotate smoothly. Intriguingly, checking the roundness of a manufactured object is trickier than one might think. When does the width of a saw blade affect an engineer's calculations--or, for that matter, the width of a physical line? When does a measurement need to be exact and when will an approximation suffice? Bryant and Sangwin tackle questions like these and enliven their discussions with many fascinating highlights from engineering history. Generously illustrated, How Round Is Your Circle? reveals some of the hidden complexities in everyday things.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 069113118X
• ISBN13: 9780691131184
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Original, informative hands-on book

I am an engineer interested in recreational mathematics so it is not surprising the book appealed to me. However, I believe the book will be more than just interesting for a wider technical oriented crowd. I found the topics to be handled with extreme clarity. The examples are abundant and most important of all, the book just makes you want to put it down, jump out of the sofa to the nearest hardware store and build the models...

amateur and professional engineers, LOOK!

The review in American Scientist said it beautifully and also included a few of the gorgeous photos of demonstrations created by the two authors. There are blocks that can be piled up so they balance with their tops not over their bottoms. There is a planimeter made from a coat-hanger wire with which to find the area of a plane figure. There is a drill bit that can drill a square hole. Terrific fun at every level from...

Surprises, Ingenuity and ... a Few Disappointments

This fascinating book flags the spot where engineering and mathematics meet. Each chapter essentially covers a different subject: from linkages to vernier scales to slide rules to balancing dominoes to suspension bridges and so much more. The authors combine the rigidly theoretical approach of mathematics to the very real, practical and physical problems faced in engineering. The result is an amazing romp through various subject...

Modeling to illustrate mathematics

This book is in the tradition of the famous book "Mathematical Models," by H. Martyn Cundy and A. P. Rollett. It shows how to create models that illustrate particular mathematical laws, and in fact Cundy was consulted, while he was still alive, by the author. It is a worthy successor to Cundy & Rollett's book, concentrating mainly in two areas: linkages to draw straight lines and curves, and constant-breadth shapes, though...

Or how trisected is your Angle?

What this book shows you is that you can really understand Mathematics, when you try to build things, even something simple, like cutting a good circle from wood. Many areas of mathematics are discussed that people instinctively feel they understand, such as the roundness of a curve or circle, dividing an angle into 3 equal parts and other interesting Objects De Mathematica. You will find fascinating ways to really model ...