- Lesson 106: Mersenne’s Laws
- Lesson 107: Cartesian Coordinates
- Lesson 108: The Mechanical Calculator
- Lesson 109: Blaise Pascal
Mersenne’s Laws
in the following table are Mersenne’s laws (one row per law) :
| Higher Notes | Lower Notes |
|---|---|
| Shorter Strings | Longer Strings |
| Tighter Strings | Looser Strings |
| Lighter Strings | Heavier Strings |
You can make higher notes on a guitar (or any other string instrument) by pressing down on a long string to make the functional part shorter.
Cartesian Coordinates
Cartesian Coordinates are X, Y, Z. They are used to pinpoint a coordinate in an area. If you drop the point to the X row, that is the X position. If you pull the object up from X to the Y, you get the Y position. When you pull the point to the Z, you get the Z position.
Please Note that I am not very smart when it comes to Cartesian Coordinates, so the information above might be slightly wrong.
The Mechanical Calculator / Blaise Pascal
Pascal was my favorite inventor this week. His family moved to Paris where his father bought bonds (he gave money to the government, and would get it back over time, with a little bit of interest (use second definition here).) and used income from that to make a living. Then the French government decided not to pay back the bonds, due to the thirty years war, leaving Pascal’s father almost without money. His father left Paris, leaving Blaise behind, but later returned, and the government gave him a job collecting taxes. This is where Pascal got his idea for the calculator. His father had to do lots of addition, and avoid mistakes. The punishment for a miscalculation is severe, and if it were to take place, the people might pay the wrong amount, and the government would get the wrong amount of money.