Curiosa Mathematica

A collection of beautiful mathematics: attractive pictures and fun results

[sixpenceee]

In geometry, the rhombicosidodecahedron, is an Archimedean solid, one of thirteen convex isogonal nonprismatic solids constructed of two or more types of regular polygon faces. It has 20 regular triangular faces, 30 square faces, 12 regular pentagonal faces, 60 vertices, and 120 edges.

Artist:@anthonyjamesstudio

Video:@dboonster

[curiosamathematica]

Mathematician Hurls Structure and Disorder Into Century-Old Problem

A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible, proving that a well-known recent conjecture is "spectacularly wrong."

[curiosamathematica]

The Math of Adele’s Album Releases: Can a Hidden Pattern Help Predict When She’ll Release Next?

Adele knows how to keep us waiting. Rumour Has It, Adele’s fourth studio album will release on November 19. After her debut album "19", fans waited three years for her second album, and four years for her third. But for her "30" album release, fans have waited more than six years. So what can math tell us about this pattern of Adele’s album releases? And can we use this hidden pattern to predict when she’ll release her next grand emotional return?

A great introduction to the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences by means of Adele’s studio albums.

[curiosamathematica]

In Topology, When Are Two Shapes the Same?

As topologists seek to classify shapes, the effort hinges on how to define a manifold and what it means for two of them to be equivalent.

[curiosamathematica]

The Story of Grace Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers.

[keerigen]

Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...

Terry Pratchett

The Science of Discworld

[curiosamathematica]

A splendid introduction to the theory of Bézier curves and their applications in for instance video game graphics.

[nevver]

Geometry homework, Lin Yung Cheng

[curiosamathematica]

To state a theorem and then to show examples of it is literally to teach backwards.

Twenty Years Before the Blackboard, Michael Stueben

[curiosamathematica]

Sir Harry Kroto, one of the three winners of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of fullerenes.

[max1461]

Had a math professor who liked to work in degrees but at the beginning of the class defined ° as the constant π/180 and I was just like

[szimmetria-airtemmizs]

From A to B.

[curiosamathematica]

[curiosamathematica]

[vacuously-true]

❄️ 🐉 dragon, koch, and two hybrid curves ❄️ 🐉

❄️ 🐉 ❄️ on the same initial line segment 🐉 ❄️ 🐉

[curiosamathematica]

He invented calculus, but you could smoke him at Monopoly.

A silly error from a serious dude.

[curiosamathematica]

Inside the symmetries of a crystal shape, a postdoctoral researcher has unearthed a counterexample to a basic conjecture about multiplicative inverses.