Here’s a nice feature from NewScientist magazine: Eight secret codes we still can’t crack.
http://www.newscientist.com/special/unbreakable-codes
Each code–like the Kryptos monument outside CIA headquarters , or the MIT Time-Lock Puzzle–is profiled in a short article.
This is a nice chart from the Chronicle of Higher Education that compares average salaries by college major.
http://chronicle.com/article/Median-Earnings-by-Major-and/127604/
Each vertical bar represents a high-level category (like Social Science or Engineering) and by scrolling over each bar you see a detailed breakdown of salary by specific major (like Poly Sci or Architecture).
Not surprisingly, math majors do pretty well, and the more applied, the better!
This is cool video showing how to make fractal images with a video camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9pbs-jjis
By using the old point-the-camera-at-the-TV trick, and multiple displays, you can really get some beautiful fractal images! There’s some really great stuff beyond the Sierpinski-like triangle seen at the right.
I must say that I enjoyed the video more with the volume off, though.
Here is an original 15×15 crossword puzzle I constructed, called “A Touch of Math“.
A Touch of Math 2011 – Patrick Honner
I would rate this puzzle as easy, suitable for those without much puzzling experience.
As the title suggests, you don’t need any special mathematical knowledge to complete this puzzle. All of the long clues, and a few short ones, are math-related, but by no means is it entirely mathematical (constructing such a puzzle would be extremely difficult!).
Try it yourself, and feel free to use it with your students.
This is a great tool for plotting vector fields:
http://dlippman.imathas.com/g1/fullgrapher2d.html
You can also plot functions of all kinds: implicit, explicit, polar, parametric, etc. In addition, you can plot several different graphs simultaneously (say, a vector field and a set of flow lines), and you can modify each graph individually.
I found this very helpful is constructing a recent test!