Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A Mathematician Goes on Vacation 1


I just got back from a three week visit of my wife's family in Serbia. I was on the lookout for anything mathematical. Check out this equation on the 100 dinar note (about $1.55). The mug is Nikola Tesla's. He is a Serbian national hero for his contributions to electrical engineering. The equation calculates a unit of measure the tesla which measures magnetic flux density. I tried to figure out what this means. No luck. (It did remind me of the flux capacitor though.)

2 comments:

Mister Teacher said...

I always find foreign money SO much cooler than American money...

Tinyc Tim said...

On CNN earlier today I learned that "the Obama Administration will lend Tesla Motors $465 million to build an electric sedan and the battery packs needed to propel it. It's one of three loans totaling almost $8 billion that the Department of Energy awarded Tuesday to spur the development of fuel-efficient vehicles."

The full article is at

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/23/tesla.electric.cars/

On Tesla Motors' site you learn

"Why the Name 'Tesla'?

The namesake of our company is the genius Nikola Tesla, an inventor, electrical engineer, and scientist. Among his life's many inventions (and more than 700 patents) are the induction motor and alternating-current power transmission. Without Tesla‘s vision and brilliance, our car wouldn't be possible. We're confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our 100 percent electric car and nod his head with both understanding and approval."

If you haven't already, reading the Wikipedia link on Tesla that Hendree provides is worth every minute spent. I have added Tesla to the list of people who have revolutionized modern thinking and whom I either had never heard of until very recently (Hugh Everett III) or only vaguely knew of (Claude E. Shannon).