Posts filed under ‘.math’
Eat Your Fractals!
by Claire Lewis
A mathematician’s favourite tea
Eat Your Fractals! by Claire Lewis
is Romanesco broccoli.
This classy cauli has the edge
compared to other types of veg,
because – and this is really great –
it’s maths in action on your plate!
A Fibonacci-style display,
which counts towards your five-a-day!
A perfect spiral swirl of buds,
more spellbinding than plain old spuds,
with tiny florets, self-repeating –
fun with fractals while you’re eating!
Afterwards, a pud to suit?
Try pineapple – it’s fractal fruit.
Like a Mathematical Proof
by Sarah Glaz
A poem courses through me
A poem . . . like a mathematical proof . . .
like a mathematical proof,
arriving whole from nowhere,
from a distant galaxy of thought.
It pours on paper
impatiently
faster than my hand
can write,
stretches wings,
flaps,
twists and turns,
strikes sparks as it forms.
It is a creature
of indescribable mystery
like a mathematical proof–
its passage
fills me
with inner peace.
Calculus
by Sarah Glaz
I tell my students the story of Newton versus Leibniz,
the war of symbols, lasting five generations,
between The Continent and British Isles,
involving deeply hurt sensibilities,
and grievous blows to national pride;
on such weighty issues as publication priority
and working systems of logical notation:
whether the derivative must be denoted by a “prime,”
an apostrophe atop the right hand corner of a function,
evaluated by Newton’s fluxions method, Δy/Δx;
or by a formal quotient of differentials dy/dx,
intimating future possibilities,
terminology that guides the mind.
The genius of both men lies in grasping simplicity
out of the swirl of ideas guarded by Chaos,
becoming channels, through which her light poured clarity
on the relation binding slope of tangent line
to area of planar region lying below a curve,
The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus,
basis of modern mathematics, claims nothing more.While Leibniz―suave, debonair, philosopher and politician,
published his proof to jubilant cheers of continental followers,
the Isles seethed unnerved,
they knew of Newton’s secret files,
locked in deep secret drawers—
for fear of theft and stranger paranoid delusions,
hiding an earlier version of the same result.
The battle escalated to public accusation,
charges of blatant plagiarism,
excommunication from The Royal Math. Society,
a few blackened eyes,
(no duels);
and raged for long after both men were buried,
splitting Isles from Continent, barring unified progress,
till black bile drained and turbulent spirits becalmed.Calculus―Latin for small stones,
primitive means of calculation; evolving to abaci;
later to principles of enumeration advanced by widespread use
of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system employed to this day,
as practiced by algebristas―barbers and bone setters in Medieval Spain;
before Calculus came the Σ (sigma) notion―
sums of infinite yet countable series;
and culminating in addition of uncountable many dimensionless line segments―
the integral―snake,
first to thirst for knowledge, at any price.
That abstract concepts, applicable―at start,
merely to the unseen unsensed objects: orbits of distant stars,
could generate intense earthly passions,
is inconceivable today;
when Mathematics is considered a dry discipline,
depleted of life sap, devoid of emotion,
alive only in convoluted brain cells of weird scientific minds.
Perfect Square
by Michael Hall
It was a perfect square.
It had four matching cornersand four equal sides.
And it was perfectly happy.
But on Monday,
the square was cut into pieces
and poked full of holes.It wasn’t perfectly square anymore.
Q: Journey to Infinity
M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity
M.C. Escher: Journey To Infinity is the story of world famous Dutch graphic artist M.C Escher (1898-1972). Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait gives us the man through his own words and images: diary musings, excerpts from lectures, correspondence and more are voiced by British actor Stephen Fry, while Escher’s woodcuts, lithographs, and other print works appear in both original and playfully altered form. Two of his sons, George (92) and Jan (80), reminisce about their parents while musician Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills & Nash) talks about Escher’s rediscovery in the 1970s. The film looks at Escher’s legacy: one can see tributes to his work in movies, in fiction, on posters, on tattoos, and elsewhere throughout our culture; indeed, few fine artists of the 20th century can lay claim to such popular appeal.
THE BOY WHO LOVED MATH
Happy Birthday, Paul Erdős!
The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos
by Deborah Heiligman, illustrated by LeUyen Pham
Most people think of mathematicians as solitary, working away in isolation. And, it’s true, many of them do. But Paul Erdos never followed the usual path. At the age of four, he could ask you when you were born and then calculate the number of seconds you had been alive in his head. But he didn’t learn to butter his own bread until he turned twenty. Instead, he traveled around the world, from one mathematician to the next, collaborating on an astonishing number of publications.
(more…)
Nothing Stopped Sophie
The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain
By Cheryl Bardoe, Illustrated by Barbara McClintock
The true story of eighteenth-century mathematician Sophie Germain, who solved the unsolvable to achieve her dream.
TheKittyCats 