I was going write a new post tonight, but now I can’t. This video deserves its own post. All to itself. Sigh.
P.S. Two things. First, look for sci-fi authors John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton. Second, I was a secretary and proud to be one. Otherwise, perfection.
“Just by exploiting the properties of a crystal, we have [insert really cool thing that we can now do thanks to MATH].
The first part is a quote from Veristasium, a scientist video blogger…
and the second part is from ME who watched his video on How a Transistor works with enthusiasm given the fact that I didn’t know how a transistor worked. Part of how a transistor works is through the science of semiconductors and his explanation of this is, I think, the best part of the video, including the aforementioned exploitation of the tetrahedral crystalline structure of silicon. A tetrahedron. One of my all time favorite polyhedra. Not only because you can make one from a standard mailing envelope.
Here’s the video!
Tor.com, in one of this week’s posts, showcases the work of Martin Klimas who breaks things and shows the beauty in the patterns that follow. Here is the picture they posted and one more from the gallery. If you click them, you will go right to more information and more from their post!
Common Sense Media has released a white paper outlining some of the ways that teens can combat gender stereotypes in social media. Here is the link to their article as well as the the paper itself. Yes. Just that. Yes.
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Now, something beautiful: Nudibranch. Beautiful in and of themselves, of course, but also these photographs courtesy of Explore and my favorite, Joe Hanson of It’s Okay to be Smart. You HAVE to see ALL The pictures. The one I show here is just to lure you in. Click HERE to see them ALL!
And, finally, a post from Brain Pickings about the art of the humorous amazon review. You kind of have to read it to believe it. Here.
That said, I have to say that this is the kind of thing that always gives me hope. For all the insipid reality tv shows that make something really boring out of something really interesting there are just as many people doing really interesting things with some of the relatively straightforward but basic components of this modern world we live in.
LaForge
…this one in particular from Albert Einstein is very nice. Certainly apropos to those of us with Baxter in mind. But even better is the rest of the paragraph of the letter Albert Einstein wrote to his son.
“I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. . . .”
Einstein was 36 and living in Berlin and his sons were living in Vienna. If you’d like to know more, click through on the photo or on this originating tweet from Maria Popova’s Brainpickings to do so.
2. Our fabulous new 9th grade English teacher, Katelyn Virmalo, and I are going to be sending out a two part Summer Reading proposal to everyone. The first part is a shared read with choices on how to share your response to the book, the second part will be four groups of books. These four groups will provide those of us who LOVE reading lists or who love to read or who love to find out new things in this way some ideas for our own personal summer reading. It will also give me and the teachers a way to do some team building in the fall, with those of you reading books from one or more category being able to get into those four groups. There will be two additional groups as well, of course: those who read a lot but didn’t choose titles from the list or those who didn’t read much at all this summer but were doing other things.
With that in mind, I’m just going to share something I am reading right now: Eleanor and Park. I’m reading it with my ears instead of my eyes and since it is told in alternating chapters by Eleanor (really big red hair and new at school) and Park (South Korean and the only person on the bus to make room for Eleanor on the first day, however reluctantly), it is a great audiobook listen. Both male and female voices. I highly recommend reading the Watchman, XMen, and Swamp Thing comics at the same time as the book. Intrigued? Hope so.
3. Traversible (I’ve always called them “traceable” and while I’m not alone, a gsearch reveals I am in the minority) networks.
Yesterday, I brought my youngest daughter to my husband in our car. Yep. Only one. Jim works at Bowdoin and walks to work since we live so close. Since he was going to drive her to the doctor’s, I brought the car, and Maggie, to him. Then, of course, since it was a beautiful day and since my mind is always going 100 miles a minute these days, I walked home. It isn’t a very long walk and I tried to prolong it by wandering around the Bowdoin quad. I wonder if it is traceable. Fine, traversable.
“A network is traversable if you can trace each arc exactly once by beginning at some point and not lifting your pencil from the paper.”
Here’s the google map. What do you think?
OK, so you might be wondering exactly which paths I am talking about. I found a google chrome “app” for want of a better word, called Pixlr so I could show you which lines I mean.
I will also point out at this point that one can take a screenshot on a chromebook by…well, here is a screenshot from a review site called modmonstr. Click through to see other things that modmonstr says you can do with a chromebook:
So. The question for YOU of course, is. Is the network traversable. Can you start at one vertex (place where segments come together) and make your way back without tracing over any segments (crossing is okay) and still end up at the same place?
Happy 4th.
LaForge
Oh, and a friend on twitter sent me this:
I answered her with this. Surely you can do better than I did!
Again, happy 4th.
More than just Math Sightings 