The Mathematics of Juggling - Softcover

Polster, Burkard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0387955135 ISBN 13: 9780387955131

Publisher: Springer, 2002

Synopsis

As a juggler the author likes to finish his performances with a stunt that combines props and techniques from a variety of juggling disciplines. Imagine him idling on a giraffe unicycle, while balancing a spinning basketball on a mouth stick, and toss-juggling a sword, a toilet plunger, and a rubber chicken. As a mathematician he is also interested in the treasure trove of beautiful mathematics used to model the different activities in a juggler's repertoire. In this book he provides an intellectually stimulating collection of mostly self-contained mathematical essays that introduce the reader to many elegant results and techniques from a wide range of mathematical disciplines such as combinatorics, graph theory, knot theory, mechanics, differential equations, control theory, and robotics. "The Mathematics of Juggling" is the first comprehensive account summarizing and expanding the results in the literature on juggling tricks and skills, as well as the mathematics behind these tricks and skills. Anybody who is not put off by the word "mathematics" in the title of this book should have a good time reading it.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Learn to juggle numbers! This book is the first comprehensive account of the mathematical techniques and results used in the modelling of juggling patterns. This includes all known and many new results about juggling sequences and matrices, the mathematical skeletons of juggling patterns.
Many useful and entertaining tips and tricks spice up the mathematical menu presented in this book. There are detailed descriptions of jugglable and attractive juggling sequences, easy zero-gravity juggling, robot juggling, as well as fun juggling of words, anti-balls, and irrational numbers.
The book also includes novel, or at least not very well known connections with topics such as bell ringing, knot theory, and the many body problem. In fact, the chapter on mathematical bell ringing has been expanded into the most comprehensive survey in the literature of the mathematics used by bell ringers.
Accessible at all levels of mathematical sophistication, this is a book for mathematically wired jugglers, mathematical bell ringers, combinatorists, mathematics educators, and just about anybody interested in beautiful and unusual applications of mathematics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0387955135
• ISBN 13: 9780387955131
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 243