Book Cover
E-book
Author Wapner, Leonard M

Title Pea and the Sun : a Mathematical Paradox
Published Natick : CRC Press, 2005

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Description 1 online resource (232 pages)
Contents ""Table of Contents""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""Introduction""; ""History: A Cast of Characters""; ""Jigsaw Fallacies and Other Curiosities""; ""Preliminaries""; ""Baby BTs""; ""Statement and Proof of the Theorem""; ""Resolution""; ""The Real World""; ""Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow""; ""Bibliography""; ""Index""
Summary "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."--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Banach-Tarski paradox -- History
Banach-Tarski paradox
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781439864845
1439864845
9781568815572
1568815573