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Spherical Geometry and Its Applications introduces spherical geometry and its practical applications in a mathematically rigorous form. The text can serve as a course in spherical geometry for mathematics majors. Readers from various academic backgrounds can comprehend various approaches to the subject.
The book introduces an axiomatic system for spherical geometry and uses it to prove the main theorems of the subject. It also provides an alternate approach using quaternions. The author illustrates how a traditional axiomatic system for plane geometry can be modified to produce a different geometric world - but a geometric world that is no less real than the geometric world of the plane.
Features:
- A well-rounded introduction to spherical geometry
- Provides several proofs of some theorems to appeal to larger audiences
- Presents principal applications: the study of the surface of the earth, the study of stars and planets in the sky, the study of three- and four-dimensional polyhedra, mappings of the sphere, and crystallography
- Many problems are based on propositions from the ancient text Sphaerica of Menelaus
List of contents
Review of three-dimensional geometry
Geometry in a plane
Geometry in space
Plane trigonometry
Coordinates and vectors
The sphere in space
Great circles
Distance and angles
Area
Spherical coordinates
Axiomatic spherical geometry
Basic axioms
Angles
Triangles
Congruence
Inequalities
Area
Trigonometry
Spherical Pythagorean theorem and law of sines
Spherical law of cosines and analogue formula
Right triangles
The four-parts and half angle formulas
Dualization
Solution of triangles
Astronomy
The celestial sphere
Changing coordinates
Rise and set of objects in the sky
The measurement of time
Rise and set times in standard time
Polyhedra
Regular solids
Crystals
Spherical mappings
Rotations and reflections
Spherical projections
Quaternions
Review of complex numbers
Quaternions: Definitions and basic properties
Application to the sphere
Triangles
Rotations and Reflections
Selected solutions to exercises
About the author
Marshall A. Whittlesey is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at California State University San Marcos. He received a BS (1992) from Trinity College in Connecticut, and a PhD from Brown University (1997) under the direction of John Wermer. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University was SE Warchawski Assistant Professor at University of California San Diego (1999-2001). He has a series of research publications in functions of several complex variables.
Summary
The author introduces spherical geometry and it practical applications in a mathematically rigorous form. Readers will see how the axiom system for plane geometry can be modified in certain ways to produce a completely different geometric world.
