(Image: https://p.turbosquid.com/ts-thumb/zQ/zEdsoI/8N0Yiu8h/r/jpg/1490376302/600x600/fit_q87/ce6ba42191e102ff20cdb8370eaf1bdbab5595d1/r.jpg) Fractions. Calculus. Imaginary numbers. If you're math-phobic like many of us, words like these trigger anxious memories of high-school math class, when the scribbles on the board were both confounding and mind-numbingly boring. Michael Brooks gets it. The British journalist may have a Ph.D. New Scientist, but he understands why so many of us detest “maths” (as they say in the U.K.). In school, math can be dreadfully dull, and once it becomes more interesting, math is cast as this almost mystical, unknowable force only comprehensible to Stephen Hawking. Not only is math not boring, but it's also not mysterious, aqua sneaker bunko (www.solitaryisle.store) either. It's a practical way of solving problems that's made our world a better place from ancient Sumeria to Silicon Valley. Here are four colorful stories that illustrate how some simple (and not so simple) math has changed our world. About 4,000 years ago, the ancient city of Ur was one of the great capitals of Sumeria in southern Mesopotamia. The agricultural revolution had enabled settlements of unprecedented size, but it was increasingly difficult for priests and Sneakers with Toes kings to keep track of grain harvests, storage and disbursements to feed both the gods and men.
What they needed, of course, was math. Nothing fancy at first, just some basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). And one of the earliest champions of arithmetic, according to ancient clay tablets recovered from Ur, was a guy named King Shulgi. Shulgi didn't just show off his godlike math skills; he built what scholars recognize as “the first mathematical state,” says Brooks. Math was mainly put to use in bookkeeping, which allowed Shulgi and his scribes to maintain tight control of Ur's finances and prevent people from defrauding the state. By putting math to work, Shulgi and Ur grew tremendously wealthy and used that wealth to develop one of the world's earliest and greatest civilizations. Shulgi is credited with constructing the Great Ziggurat of Ur, building an extensive road network and expanding his trade empire to include Arab and Indus communities. The 18th-century French monarch Louis XVI helped bankroll the American Revolution, but it left France mired in debt. The king needed a good accountant to help balance the books, so he appointed a Genevan banker named Jacques Necker as his minister of finance. But Necker was a little “too good” at his job. He made the budget public - unusual for an absolute monarchy - and used double-entry bookkeeping to carefully track expenses. Brooks says Necker believed that balanced books were not only good accounting, but also the basis of a moral, prosperous, happy and powerful government. The king's cronies may have despised Necker, but the revolutionaries loved him. It was Necker's dismissal, in fact, that was the spark that lit the powder keg of the French Revolution. Making chalk mark on generator: $1. Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.
Is it even possible that there's an automobile owner with a soul so dead that they've never said to him- or herself, “My car needs more gadgets”? Well, yes, it's likely that there are a few car owners out there like this; however, unless you've spent a huge amount of cash on a luxury car with all the options, it's doubtful that your car has every piece of automotive entertainment electronics currently on the market. Does it have an iPod dock? Can it play MP3 files off a CD? Does it have state-of-the-art speakers? A backup camera? Can your car parallel park itself? Do you have a grille-mounted (stealth) radar detector? A top-of-the-line navigation system? Has your mouth started to water yet? If you're wondering how you can upgrade your car's electronics, we're here to help. There's a lot of aftermarket gadgetry out there at fairly reasonable prices and it's hard to get out of an electronics warehouse store without seeing a gizmo or two that would make your driving experience more pleasurable.
But here's the big question: How do you get all of that gear into your car? Many retailers will happily install your new device for you at a price, but the cost of installation could easily double or triple the cost of your new toy. Do you dare bypass the professional installers and take your chances with electrical tape and a screwdriver? Do you have the electronic savvy to install it yourself? If you don't know what you're doing when installing automobile electronics, there's a good chance you could harm your new equipment, your car, or even yourself. So, you've just come home with a fancy new car stereo and a brand new set of speakers. Should you install them in your car yourself? The short answer is that it depends on how confident you feel around tools and speakers for pc electronic equipment. If you're the sort of person who turns green at the thought of prying panels off your car's dashboard or changing fuses in the fuse box, you should probably leave the installation up to the experts.
On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who doesn't feel fully dressed without a digital multimeter in your pocket and wire strippers in your hand, why in the world would you trust someone else to do the dirty work for you? Like most people, though, you probably fall somewhere between those two extremes. So let's walk through a typical installation so that you can see if you might be getting in over your head. The next step is to disconnect and isolate the negative cable from your car's battery. This step could save you considerable grief down the road. Next, you'll have to remove the old radio. This will probably require prying off one or more panels from the dashboard to gain access to the screws holding the radio in place. Other screws may be hidden on the dashboard, possibly behind control knobs or vents. Before you begin to actually remove the radio, it's a good idea to scout around to find hidden screws and then attempt to take the radio out once you're sure it's completely free. Data w as created with GSA Content Generator Demoversion.
