Geometry: Lens Artist’s Photo Challenge #141

If only I’d known in Year 8 that Geometry was all about beauty in shape, line, angle and space!

Thanks to Patti P.A. Moed for this week’s photo challenge. It’s been good fun – another Treasure Hunt.

I’ve always liked looking up for possible photos.

Staircases in all buildings are constructed at a 90 degree angle to a wall! Some are fancier than others.

To get boats up to the level where two old canals meet, engineers created the Falkirk Wheel. Tourists love it.

Stairs get you to the second floor to a great, elegant Tea Shop. This Brisbane Arcade is full of angles and only one mistake (mine).

The Helm of Discovery – Robert Falcon’s Scott’s ship was specially designed and built in Dundee for his first Antarctic expedition (to reach the South Pole )1901- 4. The new V&A Design Museum Dundee is in the background.

Something new – These flowers show the geometric pattern called “Six around one.”

A neighbourhood find. There’s geometry in all sorts of ordinary places.

And now for an almost unbelievable story –

Walking past the TV one day, I spied three men in wigs, elegant coats, stockings and buckled, high heels struggling through a tropical jungle. And that wasn’t the half of it! I sat down and watched.

Local guides abandoned them. Where were they? They carried on. There were fierce arguments in French. One contracted a fever, the others left him in the night. He recovered days later and wandered around. He had no idea where in South America he was. (It was Brazil) Charles-Marie de la Condamine walked on alone, discovered rubber, as well as which particular tree bark made the right kind of quinine to cure malaria and managed to reach Quito in Equador.

The three met up again there and began the task of taking triangulation measurements in the high mountains, in thin air, unpredictable weather, in the wrong clothes for over a year. All in all, the expedition took them eight years to complete – but they had their triangulation measurements which confirmed Newton’s theory that the earth bulged near the Equator. The other two swiftly caught a ship back to France. Condamine got on a raft, to explore a great river instead …

The TV program I happened upon was a re-enactment of a 1735 – 1743 French Scientific expedition to determine the shape of the earth. If you’re in the UK you might be able to see this episode here. 

Nothing succeeds like persistence … and accuracy. Thanks to Geometry.

For more on the life and discoveries of Charles-Marie de La Condamine see https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Charles_Marie_de_La_Condamine

hhttps://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-french-expedition-that-shaped-the-earth/79734/

                           All text and photos by Meg

Story Twigs the Imagination! by Meg Philp Copyright © under Australian Law.