Schoolboy cracks age-old maths problem

By Hum
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Grand Master

Hum

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A 16-year-old schoolboy has solved a mathematical problem which has stumped mathematicians for centuries, a newspaper report said. The boy put the historical breakthrough down to ?schoolboy naivety.?

Shouryya Ray, who moved to Germany from India with his family at the age of 12, has baffled scientists and mathematicians by solving two fundamental particle dynamics problems posed by Sir Isaac Newton over 350 years ago, Die Welt newspaper reported on Monday.

Ray?s solutions make it possible to now calculate not only the flight path of a ball, but also predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall. Previously it had only been possible to estimate this using a computer, wrote the paper.

Ray first came across the old problem when his secondary school, which specializes in science, set all their year-11 pupils a research project.

On a visit to the Technical University in Dresden pupils received raw data to evaluate a direct numerical simulation ? which can be used to describe the trajectory of a ball when it is thrown.

When he realised the current method could not get an exact result, Ray decided to have a go at solving it. He puts the whole thing down to ?schoolboy naivety? -

... he just refused to accept there was no answer to the problem.

?I asked myself: why can?t it work?? he told the paper.

Ray has been fascinated by what he calls the ?intrinsic beauty? of maths since an early age, according to the report. The boy was inspired by his engineer father who began setting him arithmetic problems at the age of six.

He recently won a youth science competition at the state level in Saxony and won second place in the Maths and IT section at the national final.

Originally from Calcutta, Ray couldn?t speak a word of German when he came to Dresden four years ago ? but now he is fluent. Since then, he was moved up two classes in school and is currently sitting his Abitur exams two years early.

But Ray doesn?t think he?s a genius, and told the paper he has weak points as a mathematician, as well as in sports and social sciences.

Ray, whose recent breakthrough may have earned him a paragraph in the schoolbooks of the future, is currently deciding whether to study maths or physics at university.

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Frankenberrie

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The paper then ask Ray, "do you have any future plans?" He replied with YES, I plan to be the first living being to walk on the Sun. "How do you plan on doing that without burning up?" the paper asked.. Ray said easy... I am gonna go at night.

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Nick H. Supervisor

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The paper then ask Ray, "do you have any future plans?" He replied with YES, I plan to be the first living being to walk on the Sun. "How do you plan on doing that without burning up?" the paper asked.. Ray said easy... I am gonna go at night.

While I groaned when I first heard that some years ago, I'm not entirely sure how a blonde joke relates to a story about a clever schoolboy mathematician...

It's pretty crazy to think that for 350 years people have been working and trying to find a solution to this, and then this boy comes along and solves it.

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rfirth

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Would be nice if they gave a short description of the exact problem, and the solution approach.

"fundamental particle dynamics"

Not the n-body problem. Or maybe it is. For one object, physics has the kinematic equations that solve the problem they seem to hint at, but that's clearly not what they are talking about. Anyone have any ideas?

2_motion_eq7.jpg

Grand Master

spacer

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Would be nice if they gave a short description of the exact problem, and the solution approach.

"fundamental particle dynamics"

Not the n-body problem. For one object, physics has the kinematic equations that solve the problem they seem to hint at, but that's clearly not what they are talking about. Anyone have any ideas?

Yeah, I was wondering that too. The article doesn't explain what the problem is, why it has stumped scientists for so long, or what his solution is.

Though, to be honest I'm a little confused as to how predicting trajectories and collisions was an unsolved problem up to this point. I remember doing those exact type of problems in physics classes throughout high school and college. I don't remember anything saying that the formulas and principles we were using were just "best guess".

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rfirth

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Yeah, I was wondering that too. The article doesn't explain what the problem is, why it has stumped scientists for so long, or what his solution is.

Though, to be honest I'm a little confused as to how predicting trajectories and collisions was an unsolved problem up to this point. I remember doing those exact type of problems in physics classes throughout high school and college. I don't remember anything saying that the formulas and principles we were using were just "best guess".

That's because the equations we were using are in fact exact. But solving a different problem.

No, I'm pretty sure this is talking about the n-body problem. There isn't an exact analytic solution for more than 2 objects. Although this guy apparently says there is.

Grand Master

Duffydemon

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Seriously. Considering Indians age verrrrrrrrrry well.

I know lots of 16 year old boys who look old. Im 20 but i look like 22-23 old guy, well because of my height. ( Im north Indian ) :p

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rfirth

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The problem involved calculating the path of a projectile that is subject to both gravity and air resistance. Ray also solved a second problem, involving a body colliding with a wall, as part of a school project.

http://www.rawstory....d-isaac-newton/

http://www.canada.co...5617/story.html

That makes sense. So... add air resistance to kinematic equations [easier said than done]... I can see that.

The second one... object colliding with a wall. An exact analytic solution would be nice. Although it probably includes a number of simplifying assumptions. Is the ball compressible [like a spring]? Does this only work for balls, or other objects as well?

Apparently the solution was already implicitly known [but still impressive if independently determined]: http://www.df.uba.ar/users/sgil/physics_paper_doc/papers_phys/mechan/air0.pdf

As for the rest... it's in this picture, but hard to see... and in German...

shouryya1.jpg

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