Born 400 years ago #Today, Blaise Pascal was child prodigy, mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was pioneer in the natural and applied sciences and invented one of the first mechanical calculators
Pascal designed and built one of the earliest mechanical calculators, known as Pascal's Calculator or Pascaline. It was a pioneering device that used gears and wheels to perform addition and subtraction. It laid the foundation for mechanical computation
He introduced the namesake Triangle, a triangular arrangement of numbers with various mathematical properties. Each number in the triangle is the sum of the two numbers directly above it.
Pascal's Theorem, also known as the Hexagrammum Mysticum Theorem, is a fundamental result in projective geometry. No matter how you choose to place the red points on the circumference, the three blue points will lie on a straight line.
Pascal's Law, also known as the principle of transmission of fluid pressure states that any pressure applied to an enclosed fluid is transmitted undiminished to all portions of the fluid and the walls of the container. A hydraulic jack is based on it
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1⃣ Greenland is the world’s largest island that’s not a continent. It’s 3x Texas but 80% ice—2.85M sq km of frozen wildness. If that ice melts? Say goodbye to Florida.
2⃣ Greenland is big…but not THAT big. Thanks to the Mercator projection, on a map, it looks like it’s about the size of Africa or 3-4 times the size of Australia when, in fact, it is only one-fourteenth the size of the former and one-quarter the size of the latter.
3⃣ Population: 56,000. More polar bears (2,500) than towns (just 17). You’re more likely to meet a bear than a traffic jam.