Book:Ian Stewart/17 Equations that Changed the World

Contents

 * Why Equations?


 * 1 The squaw on the hippopotamus
 * Pythagoras's Theorem


 * 2 Shortening the proceedings
 * Logarithms


 * 3 Ghosts of departed quantities
 * Calculus


 * 4 The system of the world
 * Newton's Law of Gravity


 * 5 Portent of the ideal world
 * The Square Root of Minus One


 * 6 Much ado about knotting
 * Euler's Formula for Polyhedra


 * 7 Patterns of chance
 * Normal Distribution


 * 8 Good vibrations
 * Wave Equation


 * 9 Ripples and blips
 * Fourier Transform


 * 10 The ascent of humanity
 * Navier-Stokes Equation


 * 11 Waves in the ether
 * Maxwell's Equations


 * 12 Law and disorder
 * Second Law of Thermodynamics


 * 13 One thing is absolute
 * Relativity


 * 14 Quantum weirdness
 * Schrödinger's Equation


 * 15 Codes, communications and computers
 * Information Theory


 * 16 The imbalance of nature
 * Chaos Theory


 * 17 The Midas formula
 * Black-Scholes Equation


 * Where next?
 * Notes
 * Illustration Credits
 * Index