ABSTRACT
Gravity is, nevertheless, an inescapable condition of terrestrial existence, and provides a suitable starting point for the introduction of some of the laws of physics as they affect architecture. The structures conceived during the Gothic era in Northern European cathedral architecture occupied several centuries before the life span of Sir Isaac Newton. In architecture, for the most part, the people are concerned with systems at rest, or statics. The appearance of the hyperbola in structure lies in the formation of curved surfaces using straight lines. Feynman, in writing about the relationship between mathematics and physics, stated a truth which may be unpalatable to those who are not mathematically inclined. Fortunately, however, the level of mathematics required for the understanding of that branch of physics involving the majority of structural forms at rest is relatively simple.
