mathematics-

Time is concept that has preoccupied the thoughts of humans since the earliest civilisations. It may only have been in the last century that we have begun to understand time, thanks to the work of Albert Einstein, but measuring its passing has been an important part of society.

Historically time has been measured using the Earth's rotation and other astronomical cycles such as the phases of the moon. The measuring of time and therefore identifying key events during the day, month or year has been essential for the development of farming, religion and sophisticated societies.

Whilst calendars have been around for millennia, from prehistoric monuments like Stone Henge, thought to indicate the winter and summer solstice and therefore identifying the longest and shortest of days for crop planting, measuring smaller increments of time has proven a technological challenge.

The first clocks were nothing more than timers, using water, burning tapers and sand. These were successful for measuring a set period of time but less useful in identifying how long left until daylight expired or other important events.

The sundial was the first real clock in that it was possible (on a sunny day) to divide the day into equal increments and thus provide a consistent measure of the day.

Mechanical clocks first appeared during the fourteenth century. Whilst their technology was based on simple mechanics and they were less accurate than existing sundials, they did provide a solution to the obvious drawbacks of the sundial (cloudy days).

Mechanical clocks really came into their own once the pendulum was developed in the 1600's which ensured the existing mechanical clocks could provide better accuracy. The development of mechanical, pendulum driven clocks rocketed throughout the next few centuries and they became increasingly accurate.

However, once it was discovered that certain crystals oscillate at exact rates whilst under the influence of an electronic current, electronic clocks soon took over as people realised they provided far better accuracy.

However, during the 1950's the atomic clock was developed, these used the oscillation of a single atom (normally caesium) that oscillated at an exact rate each second. Thanks to atomic clocks it was soon discovered that the traditional way of using the Earth's rotation and other astronomical bodies as a basis of time keeping would soon cause problems as the Earth, it was discovered, would slow down or speed up in its rotation due to the effects of the Moon's gravity.

If nothing was done, then the time told by atomic clocks (International Atomic Time- TAI) would eventually run out of synchronisation with the Earth and night would slowly become day.

A solution was found in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) where leap seconds were added to compensate for this slowing of the Earth's rotation.

UTC and atomic clocks have made possible technologies such as satellites, global communication and the Internet. Most computer networks are governed by an atomic clock via a NTP server (Network Time Protocol). NTP servers receive the time signal from an atomic clock from either a radio signal or the USA's GPS (Global Positioning System) network. This allows computers from across the globe to be synchronised to the same timescale (UTC) allowing time sensitive transactions such as the stock exchange and Internet trading.

Richard N Williams is a technical author and specialist in atomic clocks, telecommunications, NTP and network time synchronisation helping to develop dedicated NTP clocks. Please visit us for more information about a network time server or other ntp server solutions.

posted by fdwvsmr55035  # 4:33 PM 0 comments

Zero is not just a word or a numeral but a symbol of the pride of the Indian nation and the fact that the eastern culture's research and development in the field of science and mathematics is the very foundation on which the medieval world's discoveries were made and yet more future ones still remain to be made through forgotten zeroes of the east.

In this ever changing dynamic world no one really cares about this sweet little zero, but imagine if this is taken out of our lives then all the scientific developments will come to a chaotic end and your four to eight figure salary will be a single digit trauma. NASA will have to cancel their trips to mars and the moon, Hubble will just fall to the earth. Furthermore, our modern mathematics will be shaken and will find new abrupt faces to explain its complex theorems. In short, the entire world will be a bear's garden in the absence of this single numeral called 'Zero' and written as '0' and sometimes pronounced as just O.

Zero was not the brainchild of Greek, Arabic or the Western world but the product of an Indian mathematician called Brahmagupta in 598 AD. Brahmagupta was born in Gujarat in the city of Bhinmal which is currently situated in the North West Rajasthan. Brahmagupta was the head of the department of mathematics and Astronomy at the university set up by another great Vedic Indian mathematician Aryabhatta at the city of Ujjain which was at that time a great center for learning Science literature Sanskrit and the art of prediction called astronomy.

Read about Brahmagupta and his mathematics. Brahmagupta was one of the greatest mathematician of the world. The credit for the invention goes to this great mathematician.

posted by fdwvsmr55035  # 9:19 AM 0 comments