ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Timeline of geometry

Well hello there young one! Today we're going to talk about something called the timeline of geometry. Now, what is geometry you ask? It's a fancy word for the study of shapes and their properties.

So, let's start our journey through the timeline of geometry! A really long time ago, even before your grandparents were born, there were people called Ancient Egyptians. They studied geometry too! They used it to build big, amazing things like pyramids.

Next on our timeline, we have a very important guy named Euclid. He wrote a book called Elements. This book had all the important rules and properties of geometry written down, and it was used for a really long time. It's still used today!

After Euclid, we have more smart people like Archimedes and Pythagoras. Archimedes was famous for discovering the principle of buoyancy (that's a fancy word for why things float in water), and Pythagoras was famous for a special rule we use often in triangles called the Pythagorean Theorem.

Then we have a really fun time in history called the Renaissance. This is when people started looking back at Ancient Greek and Roman ideas, including geometry! Artists and architects like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo used geometry to create beautiful, intricate designs and buildings.

Now, let's fast forward a bit to more modern times. In the 1800s, a man named Carl Friedrich Gauss discovered something called non-Euclidean geometry, which meant that some of the rules Euclid wrote down weren't always true! This was a big deal and it changed the way we think about shapes and space.

Finally, we come to modern day. Geometry is still being studied and used by scientists, architects, and even video game designers! With math and geometry, they can make things like virtual reality video games that can feel like you're in a completely different world.

So there you have it, the timeline of geometry. From Ancient Egypt to the present day, geometry has been used to make amazing things and help us learn more about the world we live in!