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P h i l i p E M E A G W A L I f o r K i d s – E m e a g w a l i B o x © e m e a g w a l i . c o m
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PHILIP
EMEAGWALI
Lesson Plans
by emeagwali.com
A lesson plan on using the life of Philip Emeagwali makes a great person for kids to study for the week. You can take this in all sorts of directions - his growing up in colonial Africa, experience as a 12-year-old refugee in post-colonial Africa, 14-year-old child soldier in the 30-month Nigeria-Biafra civil war of the late 1960s, discoveries that pushed the frontiers of knowledge in physics, mathematics, computers, and internet.
The goal is to create a box containing things that pertain to the life and discoveries of Philip Emeagwali.
Key words: colonialism, brain drain, intellectual capital, human rights, prejudice, discrimination, equality, Black history month.
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Preparation Review the online biography of Philip Emeagwali and its companion lesson plans. List things significant to the life and discoveries of Philip Emeagwali, such as:
A book on Kwanzaa to represent his family African-themed holiday celebration.
Flags of countries he lived: British West Africa (Union Jack), Nigeria, Biafra, and United States. You may also include countries he visited.
An analog and electronic clock to represent his analog and electronic computers that he programmed as a teenager in Africa and in the United States.
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Comparing an analog computer to an electronic computer is similar to comparing an analog clock (left) to an electronic clock (right).
A computer to represent his 65,536 computers that he programmed to be 65,536 times faster.
A phone to represent his 1,048,576 email communication lines used to send emails 1,048,576 times faster.
An introductory high school physics book that defined and represents the Second Law of Motion which is a common thread through Emeagwali’s computers and communication wires.
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A calculus book to represent the nine partial differential equations – the most advanced expressions in calculus – that he invented and used to symbolically encode the Second Law of Motion.
A copper weather station used to read today’s weather can represent the supercomputer used to forecast tomorrow’s weather.
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Hand drawn pictures of a line with two end vertices, a square with four vertices, a cube with eight vertices, and a hypercube in four and five dimensions with 16 and 32 vertices, respectively.
The above is an illustration of the doubling procedure used by Emeagwali to generate the first few nodes (4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128) and information pathways of his hypercube supercomputer. Each hypercube was constructed by moving the next lower hypercube along an additional direction. For example, the 7-dimensional hypercube was constructed by moving the 6-dimensional hypercube along the seventh dimension.
The actual diagram of the 4,096 nodes used by Emeagwali would be too complex to be seen by the human eye. A simplified diagram is provided below.
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Wedding rings to represent his marriage.
A newspaper article on the marriage of Philip Emeagwali (in The Baltimore Afro-American, August 22, 1981.)
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A postage stamp to represent the stamps issued to commemorate Philip Emeagwali as the “Father of Supercomputers.”
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A handwritten letter to represent the letters he sent and received from Nigeria. Emeagwali’s first letter from Nigeria (dated April 16, 1974)
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The weather vane represents the second law of motion used by Emeagwali to invent his 18 equations and algorithms. How can you use equations and algorithms “measure” tomorrow's wind velocities?
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The barograph keeps a daily record of the atmospheric pressure. How do we measure tomorrow's atmospheric pressure? (Hint: Emeagwali used a 65,000 computers as a superinternet.)
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Imagine each of this computer processor in hand located at each of the 65,536 points on the Hyperball invented by Philip Emeagwali. Imagine each red line corresponding to an email communication wire. What do you have: a supercomputer or a superinternet or both? That’s what Toyota saluted in their nationwide ads.
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This TOYOTA ad ran for three years in newspapers and national magazines across the United States.
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You may need craft supplies and a shoebox and the following images.
Philip Emeagwali lived under the flags of Great Britain (1954-60), Nigeria (1960-67, 1970-74), Biafra (1967-70), and the United States of America (1974 to present).
Emeagwali (far right) family photo taken on December 24, 1962. Download photo for your printer and website.
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The information pathways of the 4096 supercomputer nodes of Emeagwali's twelve-dimensional hypercube supercomputer. Each node (symbolically represented by a point) has twelve communication channels (represented by a line) emanating from it.
The laws of motion in our universe that Emeagwali codified, using an advanced form of calculus called partial differential equations, were solved in an imaginary higher-dimensional universe containing what mathematicians call hypercubes. Geometers define the fourth dimension of the hypercube as that beyond “Length, Height, and Width.” The fifth and higher dimensions are similarly derived.
The Second Law of Motion states that:
The resultant force applied to a body is directly proportional to the product of the body's mass and its
rate of change of velocity. The change in velocity is in the direction of the force.
The rate of change of velocity is called the acceleration (a). A force is represented by F. This 330-year-
old second law states that (F a). We can introduce a constant (m) and make this proportional
relationship into an algebraic equation, F = ma. The more matter a body contains, the greater the
force required to accelerate the body. Force is equal to ma (m represents the mass of a body)
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Some partial differential equations of motion are posted in the biographical series on Philip
Emeagwali at emeagwali.com. The following are some algebraic equations of motion, which are only
true when the acceleration is constant.
v=u+at
s = ut + at
v = u + 2as
2s = t(u+v)
The symbols used are:
time (t)
initial velocity (u)
final velocity (v)
displacement (s)
and acceleration (a).
In effect, Emeagwali mentally hopped into a 12-dimensional geometrical universe to solve a three-dimensional physical problem. His approach may seem counterintuitive to a layperson, but mathematicians understand that it is sometimes easier to “escape into” higher dimensions. Indeed, in science fiction writings, a person can escape a homicidal gunman by running into the fourth dimension. A surgeon in a fourth dimensional world, which encompasses our universe, can operate inside your intestines and remove cancerous cells without cutting. Similarly, the secret to Emeagwali's success was that his 12-dimensional hypercube supercomputer provided extra communication paths for his information to travel.
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A bee to represent the bee’s honeycomb that inspired his invention of the HyperBall internet.
Emeagwali’s invention of an internet of 65,000 computers was inspired by years of studying how and why bees honeycombs are hexagonally-structured.
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Emeagwali conceived this sketch in 1974. It inspired him to make daily trips to the United States National Weather Service from 1981 to 1986. He visualized 64,000 beams of search light, each the shape of a hypothetical prism that is either hexagonally- or pentagonally-shaped.
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Philip sketched how 32 of his 65,536 computers could be programmed together as the fastest internet ever!
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65,000 computers are used to simulate nuclear explosions
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The day Hiroshima was bombed.
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Philip Emeagwali (far left) at his home with visiting computer science students of the University of Minnesota that he was then mentoring. Ijeoma Emeagwali (baby in the picture) was formerly a computer scientist at Microsoft. (Twin Cities, Minnesota, August 1992)
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Original Caption: Award-winning scientist Philip Emeagwali (left) finally met face to face with sixth grader Robert Matthews at the Garfield Park School in Willingboro.