The circle and the circle are one of the most ancient geometric figures, the philosophers of antiquity attached great importance to them. The circle is the embodiment of endless Time and Space, a symbol of all that exists, the Universe. “Of all the figures, the most beautiful is the circle,” Pythagoras thought.
There are many round objects around us. Imagine for a second that a disaster suddenly happened: everything round has disappeared on Earth! It would seem – let everything be square. Can’t you live without round pipes, and you can’t get used to square wheels? Is it possible at all to imagine a person’s life without using a circle? Why are so many bodies round? To find answers to all these questions, first of all, it is necessary to consider the history of the emergence of these concepts and their further development.
The history of the emergence and development of the geometric concepts “circle” and “circle”.
For primitive people, the shape of the objects around them played an important role. In shape and color, they distinguished edible mushrooms from inedible ones, tree species suitable for buildings from those that are only suitable for firewood, tasty nuts from bitter ones, etc. The nuts of the coconut tree, which looked like a ball, seemed especially tasty to them. Of course, there were no special names for geometric shapes. They said: “the same as a coconut” or “the same as salt” and so on. So, mastering the world around them, people got acquainted with the simplest geometric shapes.
Since ancient times, round bodies have attracted the interest of man. In ancient Egypt, there were no technical structures for the construction of the famous Egyptian pyramids. Even the huge boulders had to be polished by hand, and they were moved using round logs. We noticed that rolling is easier if you take a piece of wood with almost the same thickness at the beginning and at the end. So people got to know one of the most important bodies – the cylinder. Cylindrical rolling pins were also used by women, who unrolled clothes after washing. It was quite difficult to transport goods on the rollers, because the tree trunks themselves weighed a lot. To facilitate the work, they began to cut thin round plates from the trunks, which were already rolling more easily and with their help they were dragging the weights. This is how the first wheel appeared. Unfortunately, the direct inventor of the wheel is unknown.
Not only in the process of work did people get to know different figures. For a long time they loved to decorate themselves, their clothes, their home. And many of the jewelry created a long time ago had one form or another. The beads were spherical, bracelets and rings were circular. Ancient craftsmen learned to give a beautiful shape to bronze, gold, silver, precious stones. Artists who painted palaces also used a circle. Since the invention of the potter’s wheel, people have learned to make round dishes – pots, vases, amphorae. The columns supporting the buildings were also round.
The mathematical knowledge of the Egyptians and Babylonians was scattered and represented a set of rules proven by practice. In Ancient Greece, all the scattered knowledge was brought into a system, geometry began to develop rapidly as a science. Only in Ancient Greece did “circle” and “circle” get their names, almost all the names of geometric figures of Greek origin, as well as the word geometry itself (“geo” – earth, and “metrio” – to measure). However, these words entered the Russian language not directly from Greek, but through the Latin language.
In ancient Greece, many properties of figures, including a circle and a circle, were formulated in the form of theorems and proved. Geometry, as the science of the properties of geometric figures, was most successfully described by the Greek scientist Euclid (III century BC) in his books “Beginnings”. For many centuries, Beginnings were the only textbook for young people to study geometry. And even now, in our time, textbooks were written under the great influence of Euclid’s “Elements”.
Circle in the surrounding life.
Why are there really so many round bodies? We turned to scientific sources. This question can be answered by considering a soap bubble, tk. it is perfectly round. The forces of surface tension do not allow the soap bubble to burst and tend to give the soap bubble the most compact shape. The most compact form in nature is the ball. With a spherical shape, the air inside the bubble evenly presses on all parts of its inner wall.
There are many round objects in the sky: the sun, the moon, planets, stars. Why not be at least one non-circular planet? Well, let one be cubic or pyramidal. But this is unreal? There is a force that in the entire Universe turns worlds into smooth balls. This force is the force of gravity. Each object has its own gravity, attracts other bodies, as well as its own parts. The larger the body, the greater the force of gravity. Our earth is huge, so it has its own great gravity, which forces everything to be attracted to its center, and the body transforms into a ball. If, for some reason, it was possible to change our planet and give it a different shape, not a ball, then after a while it would again become spherical. This does not happen with bodies on earth, because their force is very small and the gravity of the earth prevents this. But if you take, for example, a drop of water and launch it into space, it immediately transforms into a ball. It is the liquid that is capable of transforming into a spherical shape. The earth consists mainly of magma (liquid) and therefore has the shape of a ball.
Thus, we came to the conclusion that nature itself chooses this convenient and compact shape – a ball.
In addition, a circle and a circle in the form of a sphere and a ball are the most common shapes in the universe.
A circle and a circle are also the trajectory of the Earth’s movement around the Sun, this is the movement of stars in the sky, this is the cyclical nature of all processes taking place in the world. If it were necessary to choose a shape that most accurately reflects the structure of the world, then it would be a circle and a circle.
After studying the scientific literature, we concluded that from time immemorial people have been using the circle in their lives.
1. Around 3300 BC, they began to use a potter’s wheel, to make round dishes – plates, vases, pots, pots, pans. Cookware has a circle (top edge) and a circle (bottom).
2. We cannot imagine our life without cars: a bus, a tractor, a bicycle, a sewing machine, a washing machine and a typewriter, an airplane, an all-terrain vehicle, a moon rover, various machines, a crane … They are not alike, but let’s take a closer look at them. They all have similar parts – parts, and one of them is a wheel. At first, the wheels were round and smooth so that they could easily roll on the ground, and then man came up with many different wheels.
3. Circle and circle are widely used in architecture and art: round arches, vaults, domes. The circle is a form of nomadic tents and settlements, for many peoples symbolizing dynamism and endless movement as opposed to the squares of houses, plots of land and cities of settled and grain-sowing peoples. Even the ancient Greeks discovered that with the help of a compass and ruler, you can construct many shapes, including hexagons, squares, and other regular polygons, and create magical patterns.
4. The scope of application of the circle in mathematics is immense: trigonometric circle, Euler circles, construction problems, pie charts, etc. Many devices have a circular scale; in mathematics, such a device is a protractor.
There are problems in mathematics that have not yet been solved, for example, the famous problem of “squaring a circle” – about constructing a square equal in size to a given circle, and so on.
5. Pictures with magic circles people use for medical purposes, when you look at them, it seems that they move. If you look at them for a few minutes, the headache goes away.
6. Also, a person uses a circle as a universal symbol meaning integrity, continuity, initial perfection, infinity, absence of beginning and end, top and bottom, cyclicality, repetition, completeness. Three concentric circles symbolize past, present and future; three spheres of the earth: earth, air and water; heavenly worlds, earth and hell; Moon phases; rising, midday and setting sun. Many peoples use the circle in religion as a symbol of the connection between the earthly and the cosmos.
Recently, crop circles have begun to appear in different parts of the globe, which are created by messengers from other worlds, wishing to warn earthlings about something.
