Blaise Pascal(1623-1662)

A source of inspiration for our era.

Presentation plan: Biography

Breakthroughs

Barometer

Philosophy

Biography

Blaise Pascal , born the 19th of June 1623 was a great scientific and philosopher. His reli-gion, the Jansenism had a big effect

on him, prohibiting any satisfaction or pleasure in life , it pushed him to do more researches and sa-crifice more of his time

on new studies which allows him to achieve new discoveries in the field of science.

 

Pascal: the scientistBlaise Pascal brought a lot of innovations to the science. Here we will give you a brief resume of some of his wonderful work, such as:

Mystic Hexagram; Pascal’s calculator: “The Pascaline”; Arithmetical triangle; Probabilities.

Mystic HexagramThis geometric figure gave us the notion of infinity. If we

connect all the intersections of the opposite sides of an hexagram (which is inside a conical) we will notice that all of the points will form a straight line.

Notion of infinity: Two parallel sides

Pascal’s calculatorThis machine is the mother of the calculator and it is consecutively the base of computers.

Arithmetical triangleBinomial coefficient : CIt represents all the possibilities to choose p elements from a

group of n elements.

Example: How can we choose 3 colours of a group of 5? The colours are: Blue, green, orange, yellow and red.

B,G,O B,O,Y G,O,Y O,Y,RB,G,Y B,O,R G,O,RB,G,R B,Y,R G,Y,R

Imagine now if we had to choose 4 colours from a group of 10?It will be a long list, that’s why Pascal invented a triangle that help

us to know some values more quickly.

np

C 35

= 10

Arithmetical triangle

ProbabilitiesThis concept is born thanks to games of chance such as poker

because people needed to know the “chances” they had to win/loose.

Equiprobability: every elements have the same probability. ex.: pick one card from a game of cards.

Equiprobability: number of favourable cases number of possible cases

Example: Probability of winning the Euro millions

C C

C C

55550

22211

x =116531800

1

BarometerThe first barometer was invented by Totticelle in 1643. For his experiment he used tube, mercury and a reservoir. The same year Blaise Pascal continue the experience, and proved the variation of the pressure on different altitude.

Pascal: the philosopherBeside his scientific activities, Blaise continued being a believer .One of his great works in philosophy was what we call today, Pascal's wager in which he explains that we have nothing to lose when we believe in God because we only have two choices :

- to believe in him and if he exists we win - to believe in him and if he doesn't exist we

don't lose anything . Those kind of views demonstrate the fact that a person can be a religious and can have a rational spirit at the same time.

Thank you for your attention