The Pea and the Sun: A Mathematical Paradox

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Mind-bending math for curious non-mathematicians

This is a wonderful pick if you love books that make impossible ideas feel strangely approachable. Wapner turns the Banach-Tarski paradox into a lively story of people, discovery, and mathematical wonder, so it never feels like a dry lesson. Readers who enjoy having their intuition delightfully broken will find this both fascinating and unexpectedly readable.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.

The Pea and the Sun: A Mathematical Paradox

Regular price $9.90
Unit price
per
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ISBN: 9781568812137
Date of Publication: 2005-04-29
Format: Hardcover
Related Collections: History, Science, Philosophy
Goodreads rating: 3.94
(rated by 157 readers)

Description

Take an apple and cut it into five pieces. Would you believe that these five pieces can be reassembled in such a fashion so as to create two apples equal in shape and size to the original? Would you believe that you could make something as large as the sun by breaking a pea into a finite number of pieces and putting it back together again? Neither did Leonard Wapner, author of The Pea and the Sun, when he was first introduced to the Banach-Tarski paradox, which asserts exactly such a notion. Written in an engaging style, The Pea and the Sun catalogues the people, events, and mathematics that contributed to the discovery of Banach and Tarski's magical paradox. Wapner makes one of the most interesting problems of advanced mathematics accessible to the non-mathematician.
 

Mind-bending math for curious non-mathematicians

This is a wonderful pick if you love books that make impossible ideas feel strangely approachable. Wapner turns the Banach-Tarski paradox into a lively story of people, discovery, and mathematical wonder, so it never feels like a dry lesson. Readers who enjoy having their intuition delightfully broken will find this both fascinating and unexpectedly readable.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.