At work we’ve got a 3D printer. In this series of posts I’ll share some of the designs I’ve made. This shape is a “spherical pseudo-cuboctahedron”, prompted by a request from Jim Propp on the math-fun mailing list. It has 24 vertices, 12 edges and 14 faces. That doesn’t satisfy Euler’s formula $V – E…
At work we’ve got a 3D printer. In this series of posts I’ll share some of the designs I’ve made. This is one of the first ‘proper’ things I’ve designed – I wanted to have a go at making something based on an object I already had. A colleague asked if I could make some…
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of October, is now online at Woolly Thoughts and Mental Blocks. The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Tim has previously written guest posts here about tiling by tricurves, and is now looking at ways of tiling with other shapes. In an earlier post elsewhere I covered some basic arc-sided shapes that tile by themselves. Lately I’ve been playing with groups of curved tiling shapes, asking a question common for me: how to…
I have two simple rules for deciding whether a popular maths book is Any Good. Firstly: does it teach me something I didn’t know? And secondly: does it entertain me when treading ground I’m familiar with?
Aperiodicolleague Kit Yates has recently had a new book out: The Maths of Life and Death. He’s kindly agreed to share a sample chapter with us, explaining the God Equation: it’s used by NICE to decide whether to fund new drugs. In my new book, The Maths of Life and Death, I explore the true…
We asked #bigmathoff competitor Lucy Rycroft-Smith to tell us a little about her latest project – CM Define It, an app aiming to collect and define mathematical vocabulary, which launches today. When you teach mathematical vocabulary, how do you define its meaning? Are you exact, choosing your words specifically? Do you give a written definition? …