X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Fermat's principle


Fermat's principle

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), in his Book of Optics (1021), expanded the principle to both reflection and refraction, and expressed an early version of the principle of least time.

Story of Your Life

The phenomenon of Heptapod B is explained by the alien's understanding of mathematics and Fermat's principle of least time.


Aleksandr Khazanov

He attended Stuyvesant High School, and was named a finalist and eventually placed 7th at the 54th Westinghouse Science Talent Search for a paper dealing with a variance of Fermat's Last Theorem.

Alfred Weber

As for the Weber triangle problem, which is a generalization of the Fermat triangle problem, it was first formulated by Thomas Simpson in 1750, and popularized by Alfred Weber in 1909.

Amir Aczel

His book, Fermat's Last Theorem (ISBN 978-1-56858-077-7), was a United States bestseller and was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Calcium chloride

By Le Chatelier's principle and the common ion effect, increasing the concentration of calcium in the water will reduce the dissolution of calcium compounds essential to the structure of concrete.

Fermat point

This question was proposed by Fermat, as a challenge to Evangelista Torricelli.

Fermat–Weber problem

Weber problem, the problem of finding a point minimizing the sum of weighted distances from given (point, weight) pairs

Geometric median, the problem of finding a point minimizing the sum of distances from given points

Fermat's theorem

The works of 17th century mathematician Pierre de Fermat engendered many theorems.

Fermat polygonal number theorem, about expressing integers as a sum of polygonal numbers

General Amherst High School

GAHS has been recognized for a number of causes, including (but not limited to): the Canadian record of per capita student contributions in donations to the Canadian Cancer Society, championships in football, hockey, basketball, track & field, wrestling, tennis, cross country and volleyball; the recipient of several Essex County "Student Prime Minister of the Year" awards (2004, 2005, & 2009) and high rankings in the University of Waterloo Fermat Mathematics competition.

Hamilton's principle

Richard Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics is based on a stationary-action principle, using path integrals.

Hydraulic press

The room featured in Fermat's Room has a design similar to that of a hydraulic press.

Inertia

Various efforts by notable physicists such as Ernst Mach (see Mach's principle), Albert Einstein, Dennis William Sciama, and Bernard Haisch have been put towards the study and theorizing of Inertia.

Krogh's principle

Another marine mollusc, the opisthobranch Aplysia possesses relatively small number of large nerve cells that are easily identified and mapped from individual to individual.

Polistes fuscatus

According to Fisher’s theory of sex ratio selection, when competition for mates is population wide, parents will evolve to invest equally in both sexes.

Position error

In consequence of Bernoulli's principle, the different speeds of the air result in different pressures at different positions on the aircraft's surface.

Principle of least action

The speculative fiction writer, Ted Chiang, has a story, Story of Your Life, that contains visual depictions of Fermat's Principle along with a discussion of its teleological dimension.

Richard Dedekind

Ideals generalize Ernst Eduard Kummer's ideal numbers, devised as part of Kummer's 1843 attempt to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.

Robert F. Coleman

The title of his thesis was Division Values in Local Fields, and it was later cited in Andrew Wiles's final paper presenting the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

S-1 Gard

Because of Bernoulli's principle, a decrease in air pressure between a larger object (such as a transit bus or large truck) and a smaller object (such as a pedestrian or cyclist) is created when passing in close proximity, resulting in a force that pulls the smaller object towards the larger object.

Shabestan

The air flow across the vertical shaft opening creates a lower pressure (see Bernoulli effect) and pulls cool air up from the qanat tunnel below the house.

Shape dynamics

Barbour and Bertotti conjectured that Jacobi's principle and a mechanism they called best matching were construction principles for a fully Machian theory.


see also