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Islamic Geometry
Marc Pelletier is a geometric artist, one of the visionaries behind the amazing Zometool system and the designer and builder of 120-cell models including one given to John Conway at Princeton and one...
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Stars in the snow
Continuing the theme of maths sculptures interacting with snow fall, here are some pictures of my bamboo star. The original design was found by Akio Hizume, and I was introduced to the idea by Chaim...
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I find myself looking for a job…
I have a weird collection of skills. Mathematics, talking about mathematics, art, making… I am certainly missing opportunities, maybe because few know the skill set even exists! So its time to...
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Arrange whatever pieces come your way
(with apologies to Virginia Wolff) A simple, classic puzzle is to give two shapes and ask if there is a way to cut one up so the pieces can be rearranged into the other. This game might seem to become...
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Why not knot wire?
I have been thinking quite a bit recently about ideas of knotting and weaving. There will probably be another post on the theme soon. As a mathematician it brought me straight back to Knot theory, I...
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Hexayurt dome details and models
Edit 4/8/12: Andrew Maxwell, Tracy Suskin, Ying Yang, students at SAIT polytechnic in Canada, have put together the engineering details for the tri-dome. People are now starting to build my tri-dome...
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CAMel
CAMel is a project to develop Rhino Grasshopper components for CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing). Hence the silly name. It is very much work in progress, but if you are brave enough, here is a first...
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Hyperboloid lighting
The hyperboloid of one sheet is a fascinating shape that turns up in many places. It was therefore a great example to take for a test of thearender which I recently purchased. This shows off its double...
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2+2 = 1? Patterns in Modular arithmetic
When someone is talking about the absolute truth of mathematics and declares that once you have defined 2 and +, then 2+2 must equal 4, there is a slightly glib response: but 2+2 = 1…Mod 3 Despite this...
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Prime Phyllotaxis Spirals
The phyllotaxis spiral is one of the classical forms of mathematics, and there is a wonderland of resources available online both images and explanations. The basic idea is to put points round in a...
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The 2×1 rectangle and Domes
Next week I am going to be at the Gathering for Gardner, an exciting meeting of mathematicians, magicians, puzzlers and others inspired by the life and work of Martin Gardner. This post is a version of...
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Have we ever lost mathematics?
If you study the history of modern mathematics one of the recurring themes is the collapse of the foundations. A realisation that the assumptions underlying a topic were not as strong as might be...
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Permutations, weaving and wedding rings
For a strange variety of reasons, even though we have just celebrated our third anniversary the process of our wedding has only really just been completed. In particular I only recently got a chance to...
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Handcrafting the digital: Wedding rings
This is cross posted on Brian Lockyear’s Gnarly Architecture blog. Those interested in the intersection of the technical and artistic worlds (probably a majority given the topics of this blog) should...
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Form follows functions
Functions are fun to play with. Just watch kids sitting around a graphing calculator. The more math you know the more fun you can have. Even better with the power of computers you can play with ideas...
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The TMC Logo
Collegiate typography parsed into a fractal, with the theme of lots of parts coming together to make the whole. That’s the corporate design spin on the new logo for the Twitter Math Camp, but for an...
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Eigencurves
OMOOS SOOS OSOTS OOOS SOZS Linear algebra is one of my favourite areas of mathematics. Its a simplification but you could say that the things that mathematics does well are small numbers and straight...
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The Curve in the Curvahedra
These are Curvahedra pieces:They can hook together to make all sorts of geometric objects. For example, take three pieces and make a triangle (or something triangle like with wiggly edges) Taking a...
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Making Spheres
Curvahedra can make all sorts of objects, but some of the most satisfying are spheres, like the classic ball itself (here serving as a Christmas ornament). So what other spheres or near spheres can be...
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Functional Drawing at C&!
Last week I taught at the first (year 0) of C&!, the Camp for Algorithmic Math Play. It was a lot of fun working on mathematical play and games with a group of 8 to 12 year olds, who both love math...
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