Last week I attended an enjoyable talk by Dr. Chris Sangwin on some of the interesting results from his book with John Bryant, “How Round is Your Circle?” at the invitation of the University of Birmingham Mathsoc. This was followed by an after-talk networking session put on by the Mathsoc using an IMA University Liaison Grant, which was a nice atmosphere for students and staff to mingle.
You can watch a video of Chris demonstrating the property of solids of constant width on YouTube and there is further information in the book and through the website at www.howround.com.
That is one of the freakiest things I’ve seen this month.. are their applications for this? Obviously spheres can do this as well.. is there some inherent advantage in this shape if it was used in some kind of bearing?
Duncan.
I found the answer to my question:
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/C.J.Sangwin/howroundcom/roundness/applications.html
Thanks! This post really got my engineering juice flowing :0
Dunc.