Education in the Museum. Part 3: Conic Curves
An intersection of a cone with a plane results in following curves: a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, or an hyperbola (as well as a pair of lines). All these line are called conic curves. Together with surfaces created by their rotation, they find many practical appliances. A few of them can be seen in the exhibition.
The exhibition prepared by the JU Museum enables the visitors to explore selected mathematical problems by free experimentation and play. A visitor is able to impersonate a Renaissance-age painter studying the rules of perspective, or become a student of Pythagoras, who uses a monochord to find the mathematical rules behind musical chords. Even the name geometry suggests its connection to measuring of Earth's surface. Means of measuring may wary – from a simple string, used to determine a right angle, to advanced measuring tools with appliance of trigonometric functions – all this can be learned in the exhibition. One of the most basic mathematical skills is making the four basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. A visitor will learn the nearly forgotten instruments and unusual methods of calculation.