Roots of Modern Technology (eBook)

Contents 5
Explaining Modern Technology 8
What Socrates Would Ask Me 9
Omitting Irrelevant Subjects Is an Art 12
No One Should Be Afraid of Formulas 14
Part I Fundamentals of Mathematics and Logic 17
Mathematicians Are Humans Like You and Me – They Count and Arrange 18
What a Number “Sees” When It Looks into a Mirror 19
Sets Are Everywhere 30
Functions Tell Us How to Get Results 36
“Come Closer!” Is What Limits Want 45
An Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth – That’s the Principle of Equations 49
Mathematicians Are Nothing Special – They Draw and Compare 57
How Mr. Euclid’s Ideas Have Grown Up 57
How the Fraction “Zero Divided by Zero” and the Product“ Infinity Times Zero” Are Related 68
Relations Which We Can Deduce, but Not Really Understand 78
When It Helps to Ignore Any Meaning 85
Where Discretionary Powers Are Not Allowed 85
Games Which Can Be Played without Thinking 87
How Logical Thinking Can Be Replaced by Pattern Recognition 91
Detours Which Are Shorter Than the Direct Route 102
How We Can Enter into Four- or Higher-Dimensional Spaces Using Simple Steps 104
About the Methods for Computing the Future 113
Attempts to Reduce Expectations to Numbers 114
How We Can Calculate the Number of Possible Cases 116
What You Can Do If You Don’t Want to Know All the Details 122
How to Handle the Situation When the Cases Are No Longer Countable 129
Statistics Are More Than Just Listing the Results of Counts 133
What Talking and Writing Have in Common 135
How Speech and Writing Are Interrelated 136
What Grammar Has to Do with the Meaning of Texts 137
How to Control Conversations in Order to Make Sure All Participants Get a Fair Chance to Say Something 145
Part II Fundamentals of Natural Sciences 148
What the Moon Has to Do with Mechanical Engineering 149
What Galileo Galilei Could Teach Us without Upsetting the Pope 150
What Sir Isaac Newton Found Out about Forces and Moving Bodies on Earth and in the Sky 155
How Albert Einstein Disregarded Common Sense 175
How Meters and Clocks Were “Relativized” and the Speed of Light Was Made the Standard Reference 175
How the Beautiful World of Mr. Newton Got Bended 191
How a Few Frog Legs Triggered the Origin of Electrical Engineering 208
The Tremendous Consequences of Accidental and Simple Observations 209
How Mr. Maxwell Transferred His Ideas from the Bath Tub to Free Space 217
How the Feasibility of High Voltage and Radio Waves Became Evident without Experimenting 228
What We Get by Multiplying or Dividing Volts, Amperes and Similar Things 234
Small, Smaller, Smallest – How the Components of Matter Were Found 242
How the Age-Old Assumption That Matter Is Composed of Atoms became Experimentally Relevant 243
What Can Be Deduced from the Assumption That Gases Are Small Balls Flying Around 249
How the Difference between Particles and Waves Disappeared 267
How Waves Can Be Forced to Show Us That They Really Are Waves 267
How It became Necessary to Consider Rays of Light and Heat as Flying Packets of Energy 271
A Theory Which Could Be Confirmed, but Stayed Inconceivable 281
Phenomena Which Even Einstein Thought to Be Impossible 302
How “Recipes” in the Cells of Living Organisms Were Found and Can Be Rewritten 308
How Organization and Life Are Connected 308
How the Living became “Technological Matter” 315
Like the Mother, Like the Father - How Inheritance Works 316
How New Recipes Can Be Smuggled into Living Cells 337
How to Provide Evidence Confirming “Who It Was” 340
Part III Fundamentals of Engineering 343
Why Engineers Are “Playing with Models” 344
What Engineers Are Needed for 344
A Look into the Toy Box of Engineers 349
How the Sine Function Makes the Jobs of Engineers Easier 374
Everything becomes Digital – Really Everything? 386
What Zeros and Ones Have to Do with Digital Systems 386
Why Engineers Want to Digitize as much as Possible 395
Computer Hardware: How Digital Systems Which Execute Programs Are Built 408
Computer Software: How Programmers Can Tell Their Computers What They Expect Them to Do 418
An Engineering Job Which Is Not Yet Adequately Done 431
Concluding Remarks 434
Acknowledgments 436
References 437
Name Index 439
Subject Index 441