| | Kepler, Napier, and the Third Law |
 | | In a sense, logarithms played a role in Kepler's formulation of the Third Law analogous to the role of Apollonius' conics in his discovery of the First Law, and with the role that tensor analysis and Riemannian geometry played in Einstein's development of the field equations of general relativity. |
 | | It's also interesting that Kepler initially described his "Third Law" in terms of a 1.5 ratio of proportions, exactly as it would appear in a log-log plot, rather than in the more familiar terms of squared periods and cubed distances. |
 | | Kepler's first law is often cited as an example of how purely mathematical ideas (e.g., the geometrical properties of conic sections) can sometimes find significant applications in the descriptions of physical phenomena. |
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