

Follow-up on the 16-year-old Mathematician Story - tokenadult
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/28/11920006-16-year-olds-equations-set-off-buzz-over-325-year-old-physics-puzzler

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ColinWright
This to accompany some previous submissions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4028756>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4029599>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4029676>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4031332>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4031625>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4034225>

Consensus seems to be that he's found a closed-form solution of a 2D
projectile with friction proportional to the square of the velocity:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u7551/teen_solves...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u7551/teen_solves_newtons_300yearold_riddle_an/c4sxd91)

[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/150242/teenager-
solv...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/150242/teenager-solves-
newton-dynamics-problem-where-is-the-paper)

------
narrator
The funny part about differential equations is that, for a subset of them,
there isn't really a systematic way to solve them. You just have to have a
talent for it. The great mathematician Ramanujan would come up with bizarre
equations that worked but he didn't really provide any information as to how
he got there, they just came to him from his subconscious.

For example:

This 1/pi equation

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan#Mathematical_achievem...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramanujan#Mathematical_achievements)

