This is a beautiful slideshow highlighting 2010 in Found Math, from the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
http://www.maa.org/community/columns/maa-found-math/2010-maa-found-math-gallery
This is a really cool project–catching photos of the math all around us–and there are a lot of really beautiful pictures here. Keep your cameras on you!
Maybe I’ll submit a few of mine next year; perhaps the shadow tetrahedron, or the parabolic hillside.
Whether it’s spheres in a cylinder, presents in a stocking, cars in a parking lot, or potatoes in a pot, the packing problem is a classic mathematical idea rich in application and complexity. Here is a nice little article on it, and just in time for Christmas!
https://www.insidescience.org/content/packing-it-all-holidays/876
The seminal result in packing is that spheres, packed cannon-ball style, can occupy around 74% of the available space when you pack them in, say, a cylinder. The article summarizes some other interesting experiments involving the packing of other solids (including M&Ms!), but none of them can be packed as efficiently as spheres.
Unfortunately, this probably won’t help you get everything in your sleigh for the trip to Grandma’s house, unless of course every gift you are giving happens to be a platonic solid.
This is a wonderful demonstration of the scale of the universe.
http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/
By zooming in and out, you travel through space-time comparing and contrasting objects with magnitudes on the order of galaxies, planets, humans, atoms, and strings. A really creative and beautiful application.
Through Math for America, I am part of an on-going collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/test-yourself-math-dec-22-2010/
This question is based on the recent GM re-IPO. Apparently, excessive media coverage can raise the value of a stock!
