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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the author in Chapter 8, “Zero Hour at Ground Zero,” some physicists think the merging of a particle and a black hole creates a tachyon or a particle with imaginary mass that could do what?

2. When was Lord Kelvin born?

3. What refers to the branch of mathematics concerned with finding tangent lines to curves, areas under curves, minima and maxima, and other geometric and analytic problems?

4. The Rayleigh–Jeans law agrees with experimental results at large wavelengths but strongly disagrees at short wavelengths. What is this inconsistency known as?

5. Quantum mechanics eliminated zero in classical thermodynamics by removing what, according to the author in Chapter 7, “Absolute Zeros”?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was discovered by Albert Einstein’s solution to the photoelectric effect?

2. What are differential equations? Who first developed differential equations?

3. How old is the universe estimated to be by astronomers today? How did they calculate this age?

4. What problem do black holes present in physics, according to the author in Chapter 8, “Zero Hour at Ground Zero”?

5. What discovery did Friedrich Riemann make in the field of projective geometry?

6. How did the discovery of imaginary numbers affect the study of algebra?

7. What does the author say thermodynamics has taught us in Chapter 7, “Absolute Zeros”?

8. How is string theory described by the author in Chapter 8, “Zero Hour at Ground Zero”?

9. What is expressed through the Rayleigh-Jeans law? How does this law relate to zero?

10. Who was Carl Gauss? What discovery did he make regarding imaginary numbers?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Describe and discuss the advancements made in mathematics, music, and philosophy by Pythagoras. What is the Pythagorean Theorem? When was it developed? What were the beliefs of the Pythagoreans?

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the work of Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johannes Kepler, and the origins and development of calculus. When did Newton and Leibniz independently create calculus? What conflict occurred between the two? When did this conflict end?

Essay Topic 3

Describe and discuss the origins and development of mathematics in Indian society. From whom did India adopt the concept of zero? How did the beliefs of Hinduism deal with the concept of zero? Why and how was this different than Christianity’s viewpoint of the void?

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