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Benvenuti in queste pagine dedicate a scienza, storia ed arte. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Torino

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

La teoria della luce di Roberto Grossatesta



estratto "Da Democrito ai quark, le grandi intuizioni della Fisica"
volume realizzato per il LXXXVII Congresso Nazionale della Società Italiana di Fisica

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Robert Grosseteste

A.C. Sparavigna (2014)
De Calore Solis, a Treatise on Heat by Robert Grosseteste. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 3 n. 1, pp. 27-31. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2014)
Robert Grosseteste and the Colours. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 3 n. 1, pp. 1-6. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
From Rome to the Antipodes: The Medieval Form of the World. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND ART, vol. 1 n. 2, pp. 16-25.

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
Gabrio Piola e il suo Elogio di Bonaventura Cavalieri. Lulu Press, Inc, Raleigh, North Carolina , pp. 1-79. ISBN 9781291298567

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
The Generation of Sounds According to Robert Grosseteste. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 2 n. 10, pp. 1-5. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
On the Rainbow, a Robert Grosseteste's Treatise on Optics. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 2 n. 9, pp. 108-113. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
Reflection and refraction in Robert Grosseteste's De Lineis, Angulis et Figuris. arXiv.org, Cornell University Library, Ithaca NY.

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
Robert Grosseteste and his Treatise on Lines, Angles and Figures of the Propagation of Light. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 2 n. 9, pp. 101-107. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
Robert Grosseteste and the Four Elements. In: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCES, vol. 2 n. 12, pp. 42-45. - ISSN 2305-3925

A.C. Sparavigna (2013)
Robert Grosseteste: the geometry to solve the complexity of the world. Scribd, San Francisco.

Sparavigna A.C. (2012)
Discussion of the De Generatione Sonorum, a treatise on sound and phonetics by Robert Grosseteste. Scribd, San Francisco, California.

A.C. Sparavigna (2012)
From Rome to the Antipodes: the medieval form of the world. arXiv.org, Cornell UniversityLibrary.

Sparavigna A.C. (2012)
Robert Grosseteste's colours. arXiv.org, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY.

Sparavigna A.C. (2012)
Sound and motion in the De Generatione Sonorum, a treatise by Robert Grosseteste. arXiv, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY.

Sparavigna A.C. (2012)
Translation and discussion of the De Iride, a treatise on optics by Robert Grosseteste. arXiv, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Pantheon as an astronomic instrument

Fiorenzo Laurelli (Twitter) published some interesting images on the sun in the Roman Pantheon.
In occasion of the Equinox he shows the light of the sun falling in this amazing temple. He is also providing an interesting reference of this subject: Il Pantheon come strumento astronomico, Fausto Masi, International EILES, 1996 .
Let us remember that the Pantheon is a building made of concrete. For more information on ancient concrete, see please my paper at the link http://www.ijsciences.com/pub/article/412




Saturday, February 1, 2014

stone circle - 2 - Jordan

Stone circles in Jordan.
Syrian desert.


Stone circle and desert kite

Stone circle and desert kite in Jordan

Stone circle - Jordan - 1


A stone circle in Jordan

About Jordan and the Syrian Desert, see also:

Desert kites - 1


The Syrian Desert is an arid land of south-western Asia, extending from the northern Arabian Peninsula to the eastern Jordan, southern Syria, and western Iraq, largely covered by lava fields. Considered in the past as a barrier between Levant and Mesopotamia, it is now crossed by several routes and pipelines. This desert possesses two volcanic regions. One is the Jabal al-Druze, in the As-Suwayda Governorate. The other field is that of the Harrat Ash Shaam.

When we observe this desert from space, we discover that this harsh environment was probably quite populated in ancient times. We can conclude this fact from some huge stone structures, the "desert kites", that can be easily seen in the images recorded by satellites. These structures were firstly observed by pilots of the Royal Air Force in the 1920s, flying over the desert. These pilots named them "kites", because these lines reminded of kites used by children to play, but in fact they are huge hunting traps.

We usually imagine our ancestors, before they settle down, as people simply hunting and gathering for food, but this is not true. The "desert kites" are the remains of an ancient hunting technique based on stone-walled traps, the construction of which surely involved several people for long times. The desert kites were used to push large herds of animals into some enclosures, or, in the worse case, to fall off from steep cliff edges. The simplest structure of a desert kite has a triangular shape, consisting of two long, low walls built of stones and arranged in a V-shape, like a  funnel, ending as a corral. Hunters pushed the game between the walls, trapping then the animals into the end of the structure. It is usually considered that animals were slaughtered “en masse”.

Typically, a desert kite possesses two, three or more small circular enclosures on the edge of its corral. Some ancient rock art images show these hunting traps, depicting the role of the 'walls' of the kites. Let us note that these walls are low and then not able to stop any game. In fact, the walls are not walls at all: they are the basements, in the rocky harraat, where stick some poles and build a fence with branches. These structures create a visual effect as a barrier for the animals.



"Kite" rock-drawing from Jordan,  G.L. Harding: The Cairn of Hani, Antiquity 28,1954:pp 165-7
(2007-02-22) In 1951, Harding discovered a burial cairn with Safaitic inscriptions. On one of the stones was scratched a hunting scane.The cairn is located in the heart of the 'Kite' area,there is no doubt that the drawing depicts a scane of the gazelles being hunted in such a' Kite'.

References
23 June 2011,  http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.4665 , http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4665v1.pdf
February 2009, Khaybar Desert Kites, Vanja Janežic
alsahra.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/khaybar-desert-kites.pdf
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412866

Friday, December 27, 2013

Trundholm Sun Chariot and Langstrup Plate

Read please this post, very interesting

Les dues vides del Carro Solar de Trundholm, Publicat per Albert
títol del TREBALL DE FINAL DE GRAU,  carrera d'Humanitats  a la UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA.
at http://alauniversitat.blogspot.it/2013/11/les-dues-vides-del-carro-solar-de.html
And also /news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/bronze-age-calendar-120330.htm



By Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47971456

See also: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2512
Ancient bronze disks, decorations and calendars, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna
(12 Mar 2012) Recently, it was published that some ancient bronze disks could had been calendars, that is, that their decorations had this function. Here I am discussing an example, the disk of the Trundholm Sun Chariot, proposing a new interpretation of it, giving a calendar of 360 days. Some geometric diagrams concerning the decoration layout are also proposed. Comments: Ancient calendars, ancient time-keeping, Bronze Age, Trundholm Sun Chariot
Cite as: arXiv:1203.2512 [physics.pop-ph]

See also http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4103
Number pi from the decoration of the Langstrup plate, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna
(19 Mar 2012), Studies of ancient bronze artifacts can be useful in understanding the progression of human knowledge of mathematics and geometry. Here I discuss the decoration composed by several circles and spirals of the Langstrup belt disk, an artifact of the Bronze Age found in Denmark. I am showing by measurements of diameters and distances of spirals, that the artist who made the decoration knew some approximations by rational numbers of the number pi, the dimensionless physical quantity representing the ratio of circumference to diameter. Comments: Ancient measurements of pi as ratio of circumference and diameters, giving rational numbers,
Cite as: arXiv:1203.4103 [physics.pop-ph]