How to Fall Slower Than Gravity

The blackboard in Richard Feynman’s Caltech office as he left it when he went home
for the last time. Feynman (1918–1988) was one of the great mathematical physicists of
the 20th century (he received a share of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work
in quantum electrodynamics). The photo illustrates the popular view of mathematical
physicists: scribes of arcane mystical symbology, understandable by only an elite few.
However, I don’t think that Feynman himself believed that. As he stated in a famous
interview (Omni, February 1979), “I don’t believe in the idea that there are a few peculiar
people capable of understanding math and the rest of the world is normal. Math is a
human discovery, and it’s no more complicated than humans can understand. I had a
calculus book once that said, ‘What one fool can do, another can.’ [Feynman was referring
to the 1910 Calculus for the Practical Man, by the British electrical engineer Silvanus P.
Thompson.] . . . There’s a tendency to pomposity in all this, to make it all [artificially]
deep and profound.’’ The two principles written in the upper-left-hand corner have
become firmly attached to the Feynman legend, and were not just slogans: he vigorously
championed them in his writings and talks.
Photo courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of Technology
How to Fall Slower Than Gravity
And Other Everyday (and Not So Everyday) Uses
of Mathematics and Physical Reasoning

PAUL J. NAHIN
 Copyright 
c 2018 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

LCCN 2018936898
ISBN 9780691176918

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Vickie Kearn and Lauren Bucca

Production Editorial: Debbie Tegarden
Text Design: Carmina Alvarez
Jacket Design: Anne Karetnikov
Production: Jacquie Poirier
Publicity: Sara Henning-Stout
Copyeditor: Barbara Liguori

This book has been composed in ITC New Baskerville

Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

Typeset by Nova Techset Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Pat, for Everything
 A uniform steel wire in the form of a circular ring is made to
revolve in its own plane about its centre of figure. Show that
the greatest possible linear velocity is independent both of
the [cross]section of the wire and of the radius of the ring,
and find roughly this velocity, the breaking strength of the
wire being given as 90,000 lbs per square inch, and the weight
of a cubic foot [of steel] as 490 lbs.
—A problem posed by John William Strutt (1842–1919), better
known in the world of physics as Lord Rayleigh (winner of the
1904 Nobel Prize in Physics), on the fourth day of the famous
9-day (!) Cambridge University Mathematical Tripos Examina-
tion of 1876. Lord Rayleigh was the examiner in mathematical
physics, and of this question the top scoring man1 (the so-called
Senior Wrangler) remembered it as being “uncommonly high,’’
that is, difficult.

Think about this problem—mentioned in Andrew Warwick’s book

Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics,
University of Chicago Press, 2003—as you read, but if after trying really
hard you can’t solve it (or you just want to check your answer), you’ll
find an analysis in the final appendix of this book. (Warwick doesn’t
solve it.)

1
Joseph Timmis Ward (1853–1935), who, with some trepidation, wrote in his
diary that same night, “What he [Lord Rayleigh] will give us in the [final] five
days I cannot think.’’ Shortly after taking top spot in the Mathematical Tripos,
Ward did the same in the even more demanding Smith’s Prizes examination.
Being good at taking math exams didn’t always lead to a successful scientific life;
Ward went on to take Holy Orders and, after decades as a priest, died a forgotten
recluse in his college rooms at Cambridge. Taking third spot behind Ward in
the 1876 Mathematical Tripos, however, was John Henry Poynting (1852–1914),
who became famous in physics for the Poynting vector (1884), which describes how
energy flows in an electromagnetic field.