Monthly Archives: October 2012

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Mr. K’s 5th grade class, check THIS out!

Go to wolframalpha.com.

This is a search engine, like Google, but a special kind.  It is one that assumes that you are talking about numbers.  So you can type in a seven letter word, like “kitchen” and it will tell you when people started using the word in history, what your phone number would be if you wanted it to be 1-800-Kitchen, and what your Scrabble score would be.

Try this.  Type in your first name.  What happens?

How about your birth date.  Type in Month Day, year, and the city where you were born.  What do you see that is interesting?

Maggie’s Mom Out!

Have Fun!

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Encrypting a message using math and a Nighttime tour of Earth October 23, 2012

First, an article by the mathdude (she says as if she knows him which she does not but this is what he goes by) on a website called quickanddirtytips which is also slightly intriguing.  The article is right which it has going for it and pretty short which it also has going for it.  If you want to know more The Code Book by Simon Singh is a must read.  Thus says LaForge.  Here’s the link:

Encrypting a message

Second, not particularly mathy except as you know, it is my deeply held conviction that math as a subject is a ridiculous way to describe certain intuitive and helpful and complicated and beautiful ways we have perceiving and describing and imagining what happens next in our world and therefore is inherent in all life, as is language and history and music and art.  So, passionate musings over, here is an awesome video of our nighttime earth brought to you by NASA via exp.lore.com:

Nighttime video

Best,  LaForge