Numberphile is a great youtube channel about maths. They invited me and Matt Parker on to fight about the circle constant. Here it is:
You can also follow Matt on twitter. And catch us both live in Festival Of The Spoken Nerd.
Geometry
5
Aug 11
Make your socks last longer with a Euclidean rubber glove switch
Your left hand and right hand are mirror images of each other. There's no way you can position your left hand so that it looks like a right hand. It will only look like a right hand if you look at it in a mirror.
There are molecules like this in chemistry. Molecules that can't be positioned in such a way as to look exactly like their own mirror image. These are called chiral molecules. We talk about them having a handedness because they share this property with our hands. Continue reading →
15
Feb 10
Shapes of constant width – coins from around the world
In a previous post I talked about shapes of constant width. I didn't know of any other coins besides the UK 50p and 20p that had the property of being the same width all the way round without being circular.
Well I was recently given this coin instead of 20p:
15
Jan 10
How 3D cinema works
I recently saw Avatar in 3D and 'forgot' to hand my glasses back in at the end. I thought I knew how this technology worked so I was very surprised when I started doing some experiments.
I saw Avatar at a Vue cinema that recently had 3D installed and the way it works is quite different to the IMAX. Continue reading →
23
Sep 09
50p coins make great wheels
50p coins are too pointy to use as wheels. Or so I thought. Continue reading →
21
Sep 09
Magnetic balls: reloaded
16
Sep 09
Magnetic balls: the beginning
I bought these magnetic balls off eBay and I've made loads of cool stuff with them.
Trouble is, after I've made one cool thing I have to destroy it before I can make another cool thing. So this blog will also serve as a photographic record of my achievements.
Let's get started then. These are the balls in an unordered state:
And here they are as a Möbius Strip:
