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!

Shocking Mathematical Results

 

Welectroshock therapyhen it comes out that I’m a math person, the most common response from people I meet is “I was never very good at math“.  After a lifetime of struggling to find the appropriate response, I finally have something positive and proactive to say:  go get yourself some electroshock therapy.

According to a recent study, running a mild electric current through the brain seems to temporarily increase mathematical ability.   Apparently the study involved teaching the subjects a new numeration system (could it have been octomatics?) and testing their ability to organize those symbols before and after electrical stimulation of the parietal lobe.

In addition to slightly increasing mathematical ability and potentially treating dyscalculia, there is hope that such electrical stimulation could improve other brain function, as well.

Now, how can I bring this revolutionary technique into my classroom?

Twirling Tori

This is a mind-blowing animation of arms circulating around a torus, created by Emilio Gomariz.  I definitely became entranced for a bit, trying to follow a single hand all the way around the donut.  (Click the image or this link if you can’t see the animation).

emiliogomariz

Apart from being visually amaazing, this puts me in mind of a result about fluid flows on surfaces.  This animation demonstrates that a liquid, for example, can flow over the surface of a torus in such a way that every point movesnothing appears stationary here, and everything is moving in a smooth (i.e., continuous) fashion.

The remarkable result is that this same can not be done on the surface of a sphere!  There will always (at least) one point on the surface of the sphere that doesn’t move.  A popular interpretation of this result is that however windy it might be outside, there is always at least one point on the Earth that is perfectly calm.

Facebook Formulas

peak breakup timesThis graph on the right represents break ups per day, as determined by an analysis of Facebook status changes.  The data suggests that break-ups seem to occur most frequently in mid-February and late November.

Drawing conclusions from data is always dicey, and there are probably a lot of holes to poke in the methodology here, but it certainly is fun trying to attach meaning to these numbers!

This graph was featured in a TED Talk given by David McCandless, who runs the wonderful website www.informationisbeautiful.net.

The whole talk can be found here; this chart comes up at around the 6:50 mark.

The amount of data available through social networking sites is mindblowing, and it can’t be long before it will be used in some significant way.  Indeed, a group of MIT students has already devised a system, cleverly titled Project Gaydar, that, with some accuracy, identifies the sexual orientation of a Facebook user based on friends, likes, and other connections.

What will they compute about us next?

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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