Greenwood press

ASYMPTOTE
9
A graph describing the hourly rate 
to drill a hole as a function of its
depth. The drilling cost becomes
insurmountable as the depth
approaches 1,000 feet, because it
is too difficult and dangerous to
dig at that depth.

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Scaling the Internet Web servers

The terminal velocity of coffee filters

Time travel?

The twisted pendulum experiment 

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CARTESIAN COORDINATES
Coordinates are useful to determine relative position and distances. For
example, pixels (dots of light) on a computer are identified by their horizontal
and vertical components, where (0,0) is at the corner of the screen. The coordi-
nates of the pixels are useful for animations that require starting and ending
points for each vertex in a diagram. Given this information, the computer will
predict intermittent coordinates of the vertices to help render the animation, with-
out having to input the coordinates for every second on the screen. 
Coordinates are also useful in computer programming to plot points on the
screen or define regions on a blueprint or graphic. For example, an image map is
a graphic that links certain portions of a Web page to different pages on a Web-
site. Image maps are used to enhance the colors on a screen or to provide a larger
region to click a list of items. The image map will probably look like a series of
buttons that are defined by geometric regions, such as rectangles or circles. When
the cursor is moved to a coordinate within a defined region on the image map, it
will move to a new page once the mouse is clicked. Suppose a rectangular region
is defined so that its upper-left coordinate is (12,35) and lower-right coordinate
is (40,70), as shown in the illustration below. This will create a hot spot region