Pentagons and Pentagrams
eBook - PDF

Pentagons and Pentagrams

An Illustrated History

  1. 168 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Pentagons and Pentagrams

An Illustrated History

About this book

A fascinating exploration of the pentagon and its role in various cultures

The pentagon and its close cousin, the pentagram, have inspired individuals for the last two and half millennia, from mathematicians and philosophers to artists and naturalists. Despite the pentagon's wide-ranging history, no single book has explored the important role of this shape in various cultures, until now. Richly illustrated, Pentagons and Pentagrams offers a sweeping view of the five-sided polygon, revealing its intriguing geometric properties and its essential influence on a variety of fields.

Traversing time, Eli Maor narrates vivid stories, both celebrated and unknown, about the pentagon and pentagram. He discusses the early Pythagoreans, who ascribed to the pentagon mythical attributes, adopted it as their emblem, and figured out its construction with a straightedge and compass. Maor looks at how a San Diego housewife uncovered four previously unknown types of pentagonal tilings, and how in 1982 a scientist's discovery of fivefold symmetries in certain alloys caused an uproar in crystallography and led to a Nobel Prize. Maor also discusses the pentagon's impact on many buildings, from medieval fortresses to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Eugen Jost's superb illustrations provide sumptuous visual context, and the book's puzzles and mazes offer fun challenges for readers, with solutions given in an appendix.

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Yes, you can access Pentagons and Pentagrams by Eli Maor,Eugen Jost in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Mathematics & Algebra. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Preface. Why the Pentagon?
  4. 1. Five
  5. 2. ϕ
  6. Sidebar 1. Four Famous Irrational Numbers: 2, ϕ, e, and π
  7. 3. But Is It Divine?
  8. 4. Constructing the Regular Pentagon
  9. Sidebar 2. Pentagonal Numbers
  10. 5. The Pentagram
  11. Centerpiece. Color Plates
  12. 6. Pentastars
  13. Sidebar 3. Pentagonal Puzzles and Curiosa
  14. 7. Tessellations: Defying the Impossible
  15. 8. The Discovery of Fivefold Symmetry in Crystals
  16. Sidebar 4. An Unsolved Mystery
  17. 9. Oh, That Pentagon
  18. Appendixes
  19. Bibliography
  20. Credits
  21. Index