Math Monday: Relativity for Real
Escher’s Relativity comes to life through 3D printing.
Math Monday
Math Monday: Glass Bead Construction
A few weeks ago this column showed an assortment of small geometric structures made from beads by Horibe Kazunori. Well, anything which is cool at hold-in-your-hand size becomes extra cool when scaled up to gigantic size.
Math Monday: Math Candy
Eli Sohl created a blog called Math Candy, which shows mathematical ideas in the form of candy. Here’s an illustration of how to approximate the area under a sine curve with a sequence of rectangles. This is what mathematicians call a Riemann sum approximation to an integral.
Math Monday: Wood Polygons
Polygons with finger joints can be friction-fit together to make many kinds of structures, including tessellations and polyhedra. But one never has enough parts for larger and larger projects, so Steve Garrison makes his own from wood. This ball comprises 60 squares, 20 triangles, and 12 pentagons, with 30 rhombic openings.
Math Monday: Playing Cards
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics We looked at playing card constructions before in this column, but this one by Nick Sayers is impressively intricate. The 270 playing cards each have four slits, and lock together like the classic IQ Lamp. Each card is forced into a curved form because it locks with […]
Math Monday: Make a Ball of Money
The diameters of US quarters and pennies are very close to the ratio needed to make a truncated icosahedron, i.e., a soccer ball in the US or a football elsewhere. Copper pennies take the place of the usually black pentagons and quarters take the place of the usually white hexagons, so even the colors work out.
Math Monday: Mathematical Beadwork
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Here is a wide variety of mathematical beadwork structures by Horibe Kazunori. Looking closely at one example, you can see how the surface curvature depends on the structure. Generally, six-sided cycles correspond to an infinite tessellation of hexagons, which makes a flat plane or can be rolled […]
