In my high school library, there was a copy of the classic book “Men of Mathematics” by E.T. Bell. Each chapter is a short biography of a notable mathematician of the past (and yes, they are all men). In the chapter on Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), I first encountered the famous story of how, as a 10 year old student, Gauss baffled his teacher by instantly solving a problem that the teacher assumed would occupy his student’s an hour or more.

In this post, I will describe Gauss’ insight, then show how a related problem can be solved by using some informed guesswork.

Instead of orbiting Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope will orbit the Sun in a special spot beyond the Earth that is a sort of gravitational island. The location is called “L2” (Lagrange Point 2). In this post, I will describe what L2 is, then show how to compute where it is relative to Earth. It’s a terrific example of the power of basic algebra.