Archive for the ‘Beauty’ Category
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
Here's an interesting exploration, illustration courtesy of Mathematica:
There's a nice animated illustration at Mathematica.
A particularly interesting case of a roulette is a regular n-gon rolling on a "road" composed of a sequence of truncated catenaries, as illustrated above. This motion is smooth in the sense that the geometric centroid follows ...
Posted in Beauty, Art | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
From TED:
At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.
Here's some biographical information on Mandelbrot:
Studying complex dynamics in the 1970s, Benoit Mandelbrot ...
Posted in Beauty, Art | No Comments »
Sunday, July 11th, 2010
Here's a delightful video that shows a nice relationship of numbers, geometry, and nature.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA[/youtube]
Hat tip to Don Cohen, the Mathman.
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Posted in Beauty | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Brian Slesinsky has a brilliant slide presentation on a very non-traditional way to derive Euler's identity. A couple of years ago I reviewed a great book that builds the foundation necessary for the proof. Slesinsky has a very different yet very elegant approach. It ties together these concepts:
Multiplication of complex ...
Posted in Beauty | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Simon and Schuster sent me a copy of Alex Bellos' new book: Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math. The book is remarkable. Alex Bellos is a gifted journalist who traveled around the world to interview people who had interesting stories to tell. The ...
Posted in Beauty | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
David Wood commented on my beautiful proof without words post:
Here is my favourite proof without words:
http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~woodd/photo/photo-19.jpg
This first appeared in a Chinese textbook about 3000 years ago!
And of course, the picture proves ….
It's a remarkable proof. I have seen similar ones but not this one. It's remarkably elegant.
Here's the image from ...
Posted in Beauty | 4 Comments »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
I found this wonderful short video on Science Friday by mathematician Robert Osserman on the Math behind the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This video is a great testament to the beauty of mathematics. Watch it and tell us if you agree.
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Posted in Beauty | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
In my neck of the woods in northern New Mexico, the Fractal Foundation lives the mission of inspiring interest in science, Math, and Art through the beauty of fractals. The Foundation puts on fractal-related programs in schools and takes them on the road. The Foundation also sponsors a very popular ...
Posted in Fun, Beauty, Art, Geometry | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 13th, 2007
If you've never heard of flexagons you're in for a treat. Flexagons are flat paper constructions, some of which are really easy to make, that are tremendously fun to play with because you "flex them", hence the name, to reveal more than the two sides that you would expect to ...
Posted in Fun, Beauty | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Phi, also known as the golden ratio or the divine proportion, is one of the great mathematical constants. It is equal to a little more than 1.6 and is a most interesting irrational (but not transcendental) number. Phi has a fascinating connection with the Fibonacci series, it can be derived ...
Posted in Beauty, Art, Geometry, Web Sites | No Comments »
