TOOLS OF SCIENCE
A series of meetings
hosted by The Physics Museum,
The University of Queensland
For students, scientists,
engineers, historians of science and technology, teachers,
collectors, and all those fascinated by old scientific instruments
| April
1 Ian Jempson |
Celestial Navigation – Black magic or applied mathematics? |
The second Tools of Science meeting for 2008 will be held at 6pm on Tuesday April 1 in Parnell (7) LR222 The speaker will be Ian Jempson and the topic Celestial Navigation – Black magic or applied mathematics? For thousands of years humans gazed at ocean horizons and pondered what lay beyond and yet it is only in the last 500 years that the tools of science and mathematical problem solving have combined to solve the navigator’s dilemma. Early astronomers began to unravel the mysteries of the universe and provide data that had navigational applications. The first tables of the sun’s declination were published in 1475 and were used to calculate latitude. How did the great navigators such as Cook chart their course and so accurately plot the hazards and landfalls? Why was the problem of finding the longitude of a position so difficult? This presentation will attempt to show that celestial navigation is more applied mathematics than black magic. Ian Jempson is the CEO of the Queensland Maritime Museum. He has an MBA, Grad Dip App Sc (Navigation) and Dip App Sc. He served in the RAN from 1982-96 and was a navigation sub-specialist with appointments as Navigating Officer of HMA Ships WOLLONGONG, CESSNOCK, DERWENT, MELBOURNE, NEWCASTLE and WESTRALIA. |
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