Blaise Pascal

Short Description of Topic

Mathematical and Scientific Discoveries

Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662) was a French inventor, physicist, and mathematician who went on to make several discoveries in both mathematics and physics. Pascal's earliest work was in natural and applied sciences, where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, as well as better explaining the ideas of pressure and vacuum. In his teenage years, Pascal started working on calculating machines. Over the course of several years, he developed fifty prototypes, and completely built twenty finished machines. These machines were called Pascal's calculators and established him as one of the first inventors of the mechanical calculator. These machines were capable of addition and subtraction, and even though they failed in becoming a commercial success, they were catalysts in the next 400 years of development of mechanical methods of calculation. His most well known mathematical contribution is what people refer to as Pascal's Triangle. This "triangle" refers to Pascal's 1653 "Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle" which describes a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients.

This shows that if you add the two numbers directly above each spot of the next row, the values you get are the order of every coefficient for each increasing degree equation.

A Mathematical Model

where p is the momentum of the system and F is the net force from the surroundings.

A Computational Model

How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript

Examples

Be sure to show all steps in your solution and include diagrams whenever possible

Connectedness

1. How is this topic connected to something that you are interested in?
2. How is it connected to your major?
3. Is there an interesting industrial application?

History

Pascal created his Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") in 1653 while he was living in Paris, France.

See also

Are there related topics or categories in this wiki resource for the curious reader to explore? How does this topic fit into that context?

Further reading

Books, Articles or other print media on this topic

External links

[1]

References

This section contains the the references you used while writing this page