A little bit of Algebra in our lives

What dose of radiation therapy should be given to shrink a thyroid tumor? ??

How much money would you have to pay each month to cover a thirty-year mortgage of $200,000 at a fixed annual interest rate of 5 percent? ??

How fast does a rocket have to go to escape the Earth’s gravity? ??

#Algebra is the place where we cut our teeth on the simplest problems of this type. The subject was developed by a mathematician around A.D. 800, building on earlier work by Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Indian scholars.

One practical impetus at that time was the challenge of calculating inheritances according to Islamic law. This process al-jabr (Arabic for “restoring”), later morphed into “algebra.” Then, long after his death, he hit the etymological jackpot again. The name, al-Khwarizmi, lives on today in the word “algorithm.”

In our own time, the quadratic formula has become an irreplaceable tool for practical applications. Engineers and scientists use it to analyze the tuning of a radio, the swaying of a footbridge or a skyscraper, the arc of a baseball or a cannonball, the ups and downs of animal populations, and countless other real-world phenomena.