Reviewing 3 chapters of Steven Strogatz’s Infinite Powers with my older son

Our schools have been closed for the last 10 days. During that time I’ve been taking a little break from having my older son work on problems and am having him read Steven Strogatz’s Infinite Powers instead.






For our project tonight I asked him to pick out three chapters that he’s liked so far to discuss. He chose chapters 2, 3, and 10. As a quick note before diving in to his thoughts on these chapters, he studied calculus last year so I was having him read Strogatz’s book for history and context rather than as an introduction to calculus.

Here’s what he had to say about Chapter 2 which is about Archimedes:

Here’s what he had to say about Chapter 3 which is about Galileo and Kepler:

Finally, here’s what he had to say about Chapter 10 which is about Fourier:

I think he’s gotten a lot out of Strogatz’s book, and I was really excited to learn that he thought Fourier’s work was interesting. Maybe the Who is Fourier book really is the next right step for him.