Geometry Photography Competition

geometry photoThe New Scientist magazine has a monthly photo contest, and the theme this month is Geometry!

I’m thinking of submitting my picture of Parabolas in Nature, but probably not my picture of my imperfect division of a squash.

The contest ends November 30th, at midnight.  The winner and select runners-up will be posted on the New Scientist website.  All the details can be found here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19684-photo-competition-geometry.html

So keep your eyes open and your camera at hand–there’s a lot of Geometry out there!

Cofffe and Cream — A Straightforward Solution

I offered a classic mixture problem–Coffee and Cream–and I suppose it is appropriate that the poll results show a mixture of opinions.  Although one answer clearly seems to be the favorite, there is still strong support for the other two options.  I offer here one approach to solving this classic conundrum.

We begin by adopting a powerful problem solving strategy, one that when used incorrectly can lead to disaster, but when used properly, can turn hard problems into simple ones:  we make a wish.

In the statement of the Coffee and Cream problem, no real mention of measurements were made, and, since all the results are ratios anyway, we can wish for whatever starting amount we want.  So, let us wish that each cup contains 10 spoonfuls, and proceed from there.coffee and cream solution 1So there are 10 spoonfuls of coffee on the left, and 10 spoonfuls of cream on the right.  We take one spoonful of cream, and add it to the coffee.coffee and cream solution 2There are now 11 spoonfuls of liquid in the cup on the left:  10 spoonfuls of coffee and 1 spoonful of cream.  Thus, the cup on the left is 1/11 cream and 10/11 coffee.  Now we mix.coffee and cream solution 3Mixing doesn’t change the amounts of coffee and cream in the cup:  the cup on the left is still 1/11 cream and 10/11 coffee.  So we take one spoonful of that, and add it to the cream.coffee and cream solution 4The cup on the left once again has 10 spoonfuls of liquid, and that liquid is 1/11 cream and 10/11 coffee.  So of the liquid on the left,  1/11 of 10 spoonfuls, or 10/11 of a spoonful, is cream.  In other words, there is 10/11 of a spoonful of cream in the coffee.

Now the cup on the right also again has 10 spoonfuls of liquid in it.  How much of that is coffee?  Well, the only coffee in the cup on the right came from the one spoonful of mixture we just added.  And that mixture is 10/11 coffee! coffee and cream solution 5Whether we mix it up or not, there is now 10/11 of a spoonful of coffee in the cream.

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Proofs Without Words

Here are two of my favorite Proofs Without Words.  I’ve been thinking about infinite geometric series a lot lately, and these are two lovely, well-known, visualizations of two amazing infinite sums:

infinite series -- square

In a square of side length 1 (and therefore, area 1), cut the square in half; then cut one half in half (that’s a quarter); now cut one of the quarters in half (that’s an eighth); and so on and so on and so on (this puts the infinite in infinite sum).  Eventually you’ll fill up the whole squareSo this is a demonstration of the following amazing, and somewhat counterintuitive, fact that

infinite series sum 1

Similarly, this diagram

infinite series -- triangle

is a visual representation of the following sum:

infinite series sum 2

As any good, lazy mathematician would say, the details are left to the reader.

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Coffee and Cream

I was recently reminded of an excellent math problem involving mixtures.

Imagine yourself sitting in front of a cup of coffee and a cup of cream.

coffee and cream solution 1Suppose you take a spoonful of cream, pour it into the coffee, and stir it up. Now once that’s thoroughly mixed, you take a spoonful of the mixture and pour it back into the cream. Then you mix that up.  After all of this, is there more coffee in the cream, more cream in the coffee, or equal amounts in both?

I encourage you to think about the problem before perusing the several solutions below!

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