At Maths Jam Nottingham January 2012, Jon brought this puzzle. You have three pairs of coloured balls – 2 each of red, white and blue. Within each pair one ball is heavy and one is light but you do not know which. All three heavy balls are equally heavy and all three light balls are…
Origami masks and tessellations by Joel Cooper
Origami masks and tessellations by Joel Cooper:
Maths Jam Conference talk write-ups
I have attended the two Maths Jam conferences – 2010 near Stone and 2011 near Crewe. At each I gave two talks, one of each I have written up over at Second-Rate Minds, the mathematics writing blog Samuel Hansen and I share over at ACMEScience.com. Most recently I wrote up my 2011 talk Why the…
Interesting Esoterica Summation
I’m going to try collecting additions to my Interesting Esoterica collection in let’s-say-weekly posts. I’ll link to each item, maybe paste its abstract, and write a sentence or two about it. Let’s see if it catches on. I’m not sure if I’ll have the will to do this regularly. I’m in a bit of a…
Rashad Alakbarov Paints with Shadows and Light
Rashad Alakbarov Paints with Shadows and Light:
Why the hot light bulb annoys me
A new post is available over at Second-Rate Minds by Peter Rowlett. The light bulb puzzle presents you with three switches, one of which controls a light bulb inside a closed room. You are permitted to flip switches as much as you like, then you must open the door and say which switch controls the…
Favourite popular mathematics books
I consider popular mathematics writing to be a good thing. I even tried a little myself and would be keen to try more. I am not, however, an expert in this genre. I certainly read popular maths and science books as a teenager and I remember fondly, along with a couple of physics books and…