Sharon B. Finger

mathematics courses taught by me at Lonestar College….also fun and interesting facts not only about mathematics, but my interests, ideas, and opinions, as well. ENJOY!

Archive for January, 2017

The Gateway to the West

stl-archThe St. Louis Gateway Arch is shaped as an inverted catenary.   A catenary is the shape that a chain takes on while being held by the two ends. Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, named this curve from the Latin word catenarius, which means “related to a chain.”

Equation for catenary curve:  y = k cosh(x/k), a hyperbolic cosine curve, of course.