Chapter 49: 476-483

Revision as of 10:03, 15 October 2009 by Greenlantern (Talk | contribs) (Page 477)

Page 476

York
See page 393.

Gunpowder Creek
The Gunpowder River is a river in Maryland, United States. It is formed by the joining of Big Gunpowder Falls and Little Gunpowder Falls. Big Gunpowder begins in the extreme southern part of Pennsylvania's York County. From there, the "Big Gunpowder" flows in a generally southeast direction through the length of Baltimore County until it reaches Joppatowne where it is joined by the "Little Gunpowder" and the Bird River becoming simply the "Gunpowder River" once it passes the Amtrak train bridge that runs from Chase to Joppa. From WIKI

Page 477

Ensign Cheer
Is this Dixon making a sarcastic remark, implying Mason is being pessimistic or discouraging about his Fire-flies plans?

Page 478

Eyre Coote
Lieutenant-General Sir Eyre Coote, KB (1726 – April 28, 1783), was an Irish soldier who served time in India. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyre_Coote

Page 482

Epsilons usually. Miserable little sort of things. This exchange is a reference to mathematical analysis and the rigorous foundations of the calculus of limits. Typically epsilon denotes an arbitrary positive number which a certain quantity is shown to be smaller than, in order to show that this quantity is in fact zero. This allusion is anachronistic because this idea of a limit first appears only in the writings of Augustin Louis Cauchy in 1821, and was only formally stated by Karl Weierstrass some decades later. Any student of mathematics will no doubt fondly remember having to master the epsilon-delta argument.

Personal tools