Monthly archives for July, 2013
How Much Pi Do You Need?
NASA scientists keep the space station operational with only 15 or 16 significant digits of pi, and the fundamental constants of the universe only require 32. Yet in 2006 Akira Haraguchi of Japan recited 100,000 digits of pi from memory in 16 ½ hours, stopping for five minutes every hour to replenish his strength with onigiri rice balls. And [...]
A Tasty Geometric Morsel Every Day
#426 Tectonic Activity. Image copyright Tilman Zitzmann. Used with permission.
It’s fun to look through the Geometry Daily archives and notice similarities between designs published around the same time. Tilman seems to have had a hexagon phase in the 320’s, and you can definitely see the designs getting more complex but also more [...]
Here a Henge, There a Henge: Astronom...
Manhattanhenge. Image: Flickr user EffingBoring.
Tomorrow evening, the setting sun will align with Manhattan’s street grid to produce a striking phenomenon dubbed “Manhattanhenge.” Taking its name from the more famous Stonehenge in England, where the sun rises over the prominent Heel Stone on the summer solstice, Manhattanhenge happens twice [...]
Platonic Solids, Symmetry, and the Fo...
The icosidodecahedron, a solid “halfway through” the transition from the dodecahedron to its dual, the icosahedron. Image: Tomruen, via Wikipedia. Created using Robert Webb’s Great Stella software.
On his blog Azimuth, John Baez has been posting a series called “Symmetry and the Fourth Dimension.” He writes: R [...]
A Twelve-Tone Trip Down Memory Lane
Last week Vi Hart posted a wonderful 30-minute video on twelve-tone music, and it really took me back!
(If the video doesn’t load for you, watch it on YouTube.)
Ten years ago, I hadn’t yet decided I wanted to do math. In fact, I was enjoying my music theory classes immensely, and I thought I might study it in graduate school. In [...]
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