Courtesy of Explore: Artist Karen Kamenetzky’s microbiology-inspired quilts, the best thing since Michele Banks’s biological watercolors and Luke Jerram’s glass microbiology.
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Measurement, a new Book by Paul Lockhart
“What makes a mathematician is not technical skill or encyclopedic knowledge but insatiable curiosity and a desire for simple beauty.”
Yes, just yes.
The review from Brainpickings is here. But I will also say that the review mentioned three more mathematical places and I include them here for your investigative and mathematical pleasure.
VI HART AND HER STOP MOTION DOODLES; EXTRAORDINARY
Robin Moore’s string portraits; NEW TO ME
Anatolii Fomenko’s Mathematical Impressions; ALSO NEW TO ME
Seriously, though. If you only have 15 minutes, go to vihart.com and watch something. Anything.
LaForge
Question for you:
I’ve made this quilt. It is shaped like a hexagon. I want to add triangles to each corner so that the hexagon is inside a rectangle. It took a (sadly 🙂 surprising amount of thinking to wrap my head around the answers I needed. See how you do. Each side of the hexagon is 40 inches.
1. What size triangle needs to go at each corner?
2. Once I have put the triangles on, will the shape be a square or a rectangle?
3. What will the dimensions of the quilt be?
4. What do these dimensions mean? Will it be a quilt for the couch? A twin bed? A double?
Help?
LaForge
Best Astronomy Photographers of 2012
A lot of interesting math happens in really really big spaces and really really small spaces. Today’s entry for the big spaces is Martin Pugh’s award winning photograph, and a few more from several other extraordinary photographers. There is even a winner in the Young Astronomer Category. Check it out here.
Which is bigger…the number of molecules in 10 drops of water, all the grains of sand on Earth, the stars in the universe?
Read this short article from the New York Times on Monday, Sept 17, to find out. Guess first, though. How’d you do?
LaForge
What the Slinky Knows
I knew I liked slinkies. And physics. I was right.
“And tears don’t flow the same in space…”
Letter from Commander Frank Culbertson
The link sends you to NASA where you can read the text of a letter from Expedition Three Commander Frank L. Culbertson (Captain, USN Retired), reflecting on the events of September 11.
September 11, 2012
On this day, many of us remember the events of September 11. One thing that I am deeply aware of is the way that those events brought us together, the many ways that people sought to help each other. The memorial wall and the arrangement of names on it seeks to link people in a meaningful way….not only joining those who were to be married or who worked together, but to connect people whose families became close after the tragedy or to connect people who shared the struggle to get out of the buildings alive. Mathematics helped make these connections happen. You can read more about it at Scientific American here
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9/11 Memorial Wall
Names are arranged by mathematicians
SET, if you don’t play, check it out
Some Sets of the Day:
That said, the Set I’m talkin’ about today is the daily puzzle published by the
Find all six sets…only one rule…each characteristic on all three cards in a set must be either all the same or all different.
See if you can do it! SET
More than just Math Sightings 