Hope Frihauf

Hannah Starbuck
Pre-Calculus, Period 3
2 November 2014
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in Paris, France and ended up
growing up in different parts of France for his whole life. His mother died when he
was three, therefore leaving his father to take care of him. Pascal also had two
sisters named Jaqueline and Gilberte. tienne Pascal, Blaises father, taught all of
his children at home because of the potential he saw in them. tienne influenced
Blaise the most because they were both interested in math and science. Blaise
ended up being a child prodigy. However, Blaise seemed to only be interested in
math, making it difficult for his father to teach him other subjects. Eventually
tienne decided to cut math out of the curriculum for Blaise.
When Blaise wasnt allowed to learn math while his father was teaching, he
taught math to himself. He was especially interested in geometry. Blaise managed
to figure out that the sum of all of the angles in a triangle is equal to 180 degrees
by finding out that all of the angles in a triangle are equal to two right triangles. His
father then decided to let him read Euclid. Euclid fascinated Blaise enough that he
became even more curious about geometry.
tienne decided that he would let Blaise go to
math meetings with him. At the age of 16, Blaise
created what he called The Mystical Hexagon, but
what is known today as Pascals Theorem and showed
it in one of these meetings. The theorem consisted of

the idea that if there is a hexagon inside of a circle, then the three intersecting
points that are opposite of each other lie on a line that we now call the Pascal line.
No one believed that Pascal could have actually written the Theorem because it was
so advanced. This led them to believe that it must have been Blaises father who
wrote it. It was cleared up that Blaise did, in fact write the theorem and he received
little praise.
Blaise then moved on to write more work. He wrote the Essay on Conic
Sections. The conic sections worked by splitting up two cones to make a parabola,
circle, ellipse, and a hyperbola. The conic sections also explained his previous
hexagon theorem by showing that you can create different shapes or graphs from
intersecting points in a different shape. From here, Blaise only advanced more in
his studies. At the age of only 18, Blaise created a mechanical calculator after
watching his father suffer over calculating taxes. Because tienne was a tax
collector, he had to calculate the taxes that were owed and paid over and over
again. The calculator was a wheel with eight dials that each stood for a different
number. It was able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. You can find Blaises
calculators in Paris, France and Dresden, Germany today.
Pascals calculators were not very popular. The cause of this was mainly
because they cost a great deal of money. The calculator became mainly an item
that showed that you were wealthy enough to afford one. Blaise decided that the
design needed to be improved. He improved them for about ten years until it finally
went out of production about a year later. However it still got the idea of a
calculator going.

After making the calculator, Blaise mostly focused on science. He proved

that hydrostatic pressure doesnt depend on weight, but actually depends on the
elevation. Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure that occurs when you change the
elevation of an object, therefore changing the force of gravity on an object. Pascal
proved that it depends on elevation by placing a tube of mercury upside down in a
bowl of mercury and asked his fellow scientists what was in the empty space in the
rest of the tube. Most of them said that it was an invisible substance because of
what they had known from Aristotles previous theory. Blaise ended up proving to
them that it was actually a vacuum, proving that hydrostatic pressure depends on
elevation. He then wrote the "New Experiments with the Vacuum", which explained
the rules that showed his theory with the vacuum.
In the 1650s Pascal also tested with perpetual motion and tried to make a
machine where you put in less energy than you got out. During this process, Blaise
accidentally created the roulette machine. Blaise then discovered the mathematical
world of probabilities. He and Pierre de Fermat started testing with dice to see if
there was a specific probability for each time that you roll the dice. They discovered
that there is indeed a specific outcome for each roll of the dice. This discovery led
them to believe that nothing is random. There is a probability for every experiment.
Around the same time that Blaise was working with probabilities, he made
what we now call Pascals Triangle, in 1653. Pascals Triangle is usually used in
probability, which makes it likely that
this is why he constructed it around
the same time that he discovered
probability. He made the triangle
using a series of recursions. It was

almost like a multiplication table. You take the top left and right numbers in the
triangle and add them together to find the number below. The numbers on the
outside of the triangle are always one. The triangle can represent a Fibonacci
sequence by using the numbers 1, 1, 1+1, 1+2, 1+3+1, 1+4+3, 1+5+6+1, and so
on. It can also be used with polynomials if you are raising them to exponents in a
sequence. The polynomials will make Pascal's Triangle if they are put in this
sequence. Pascals Triangle is most often used in probability by taking all of the
possibilities for something and sets it out in front of you so that you could easily find
the correct number of probability.
Pascals death in 1661 was no surprise. He had been suffering from insomnia
and digestive issues since he was a teen. The problems only worsened as he grew
older. He was constantly in pain, whether it was from a migraine or from stomach
pain. It was no secret to everyone that Pascal was not in the greatest health, but he
continued with his work through the pain. Many people described him as a stubborn
perfectionist. Eventually, Blaise developed a tumor in his stomach. The tumor had
moved to his brain when he died in his sister Gilbretes house on August 19, 1662 at
the age of 39.
Pascal will be most remembered for his discoveries with Hydrostatic Pressure,
Pascals Triangle, and Pascals Theorem. His testing with calculators was also very
important for future discoveries. Blaise Pascal contributed to the math world in
many life-changing ways. Without his discoveries, life would be a lot harder and we
would probably still be following Aristotles theory for Hydrostatic Pressure. Pascal
has enabled the whole human race to advance in our technology in math and
science.

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