Tag 'mathematics'

I also put up a small page on Sierpinski's Tetrahedron. I'll be leading a workshop where we make a large one at the BRIDGES conference in two weeks. But first, I'm off to Paris to speak at the ESMA conference!

To get a sense of the kind of wonderful things he's inspired, check out reports from this year's Gathering for Gardner, such as this article by Bob Crease in The Wall Street Journal, or more recently, this one by Alex Bellos in The New Scientist. The building of the balloon snub dodecahedron mentioned in that article is shown at right, and the print version of contains a rather large picture of myself holding a balloon octahedron in front of my face.

Yes, one of the many fun people I hung out with was Mike Naylor, the mastermind behind Naked Geometry. A group of us got together and tried doing some human geometry. Here is a cube we made with ourselves, and a lovely tessellation that Mike created out of me.

Click to play (1 min 51 sec)

Also available on YouTube.

For comparison, you can listen to the theme in piano from the Harry Potter Septet. This section is inspired by Dumbledore's speech at the end of Book 4, and spans from the theme entrance to the end of the movement.

Click to play (3 min 21 sec)

I also spent the day making magic balloon octahedra for people. Here are some pictures from the event:

A girl sets the dials on the organ function grinder, while her friend inserts a number ticket.	Making a balloon octahedron wand (orange), watched by a girl who just received one (light blue). In the background, people ride square-wheeled tricycles.

Learn more about the other exhibits at the Math Midway on their website.

The 12,000 pieces are for an "organ fuction grinder." You choose a number to input, and set some dials to various mathematical transformations. Not only does the number get put through the transformations, but a musical theme also! For example, if you add three to your number, the melody gets transposed up three steps. It's very cool to play with the Mathematica version, programmed by George Hart, and I plan to get an online version up in the future.

The rest of the Math Midway exhibit promises to be really fun too. There will be a tricycle with square wheels which, as you can try for yourself, gives a perfectly smooth ride! There will also be giant puzzles and other cool stuff.

Related to this paper is a seven-movement piece in which each movement is inspired by and contains the symmetry of each of the seven frieze patterns. The piece will ultimately be a piano trio, but three movements of the piano sketch are now available:

1.	Dizzy Hop	Click to play (1 min 28 sec)
2.	Hop	Click to play (1 min 26 sec)
3.	Sidle	Click to play (2 min 18 sec)