{"id":15889,"date":"2016-01-29T14:09:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T20:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=15889"},"modified":"2016-01-29T14:11:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-29T20:11:31","slug":"math-whizzes-of-ancient-babylon-figured-out-forerunner-of-calculus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=15889","title":{"rendered":"Math whizzes of ancient Babylon figured out forerunner of calculus"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>During that interval, Jupiter\u2019s motion across the sky appears to slow. (Such erratic apparent motion stems from the complex combination of Earth\u2019s own orbit around the sun with that of Jupiter.) A graph of Jupiter\u2019s apparent velocity against time slopes downward, so that the area under the curve forms a trapezoid. The area of the trapezoid in turn gives the distance that Jupiter has moved along the ecliptic during the \u202860 days. <strong>Calculating the area under a curve to determine a numerical value is a basic operation, known as the integral between two points,<\/strong> in calculus. Discovering that the Babylonians understood this \u201cwas the real \u2018aha!\u2019 moment,\u201d Ossendrijver says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2016\/01\/math-whizzes-ancient-babylon-figured-out-forerunner-calculus\">Math whizzes of ancient Babylon figured out forerunner of calculus | Science | AAAS<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After cuneiform died out around 100 C.E., Babylonian astronomy was thought to have been virtually forgotten, he notes. It was left to French and English philosophers and mathematicians in the late Middle Ages to reinvent what the Babylonians had developed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During that interval, Jupiter\u2019s motion across the sky appears to slow. (Such erratic apparent motion stems from the complex combination of Earth\u2019s own orbit around the sun with that of Jupiter.) A graph of Jupiter\u2019s apparent velocity against time slopes &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=15889\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[737],"tags":[855,1253,645,180],"class_list":["post-15889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stem","tag-astronomy","tag-calculus","tag-history","tag-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15889"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15892,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15889\/revisions\/15892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}