Current Reading

This blog is primarily for me to blog my responses to books that I'm reading. Sometimes I blog about other stuff too, though.

Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond.

Word cloud

Word cloud

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Perpetual motion Mach-ine

On pages 24-26, Mach lays out Stevinus's argument for how forces on inclined planes work.  The freshman treatment of inclined planes is technical, it teaches important skills, and it is understandable, but it is also as dull as George W. Bush in a grammar class.  Stevinus, on the other hand, proves that if inclined planes worked differently than we know them to work then perpetual motion devices would be possible.  That is a gem of reasoning.

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