math

Scientists Reignite Thirty-Year-Old Debate About Glass With New Calculation

Mathematics is far more fraught with debate and disagreement than you might imagine. Arguments about things some of the smartest physicists have trouble understanding rage for years. Recently, a pair of mathematicians ignited some old flames—or rather, shattered some glass—with a new set of results that, if correct, have far-reaching implications in physics and even…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jun 2

How Many Chicken McNuggets Are in the Big Chicken?

By now, you’ve definitely seen or at least heard of The Big Chicken. He is large. He contains multitudes. And he is most certainly real. While I’m not a chicken expert myself, judging by his phenotypes (i.e. extremely large and incredibly fluffy), he’s likely a Brahma chicken—a massive bird originally from India, traditionally kept as…

Tech News Rae Paoletta Mar 20

Reminder: Mike Pence Voted Against Recognizing Pi Day

Every year on March 14th, the nerd community gathers ‘round to celebrate the beloved mathematical constant pi. We know that pi is so much more than the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter—it’s critical to understanding the best things in life, which are all circular. Pizza, for example, is an excellent circle. So…

Tech News Rae Paoletta Mar 14

These Black Female Mathematicians Should Be Stars in the Blockbusters of Tomorrow

The hallways of math and science history are overflowing with the achievements of white men, from Sir Isaac Newton to Steve Jobs; their faces are printed into elementary school textbooks everywhere, and their achievements have been indelibly drilled into our minds, with countless awards and institutions named after them. To be brilliant is a gift,…

Tech News Rae Paoletta Mar 8

10 Tips to Improve Your Mental Math Ability

Calculators are awesome, but they’re not always handy. More to the point, no one wants to be seen reaching for the calculator on their mobile phone when it’s time to figure out a 15 percent gratuity. Here are ten tips to help you crunch numbers in your head. Mental math isn’t as difficult as it…

Tech News George Dvorsky Feb 23

A Quick Animated History of Why We Use the Numbers We Use

I find the history of numbers so much more fascinating than the application of numbers. Who cares about learning calculus, when you can geek out on the brief history of numerical systems? Alessandra King shows us how different civilizations came up with different ways to count things, and it’s really neat to compare all the…

Sploid Casey Chan Jan 19

If Einstein Is Right Santa Is Even Fatter Than We Thought

There’s a controversial little interpretation of Einstein’s theory of special relativity that could affect what happens to masses moving at a really high speeds: they appear to get heavier. The effect isn’t huge until something nudges right up to the speed of light, when its mass seems to shoot up to infinity. This happens because…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Dec 21

This Paper Calculator Adds Via a Series of Tubes

Human beings have always created tools for calculating numbers, from the ancient abacus to today’s electronic calculators. But here’s an ingenious calculator drawn on paper—the creation of comic book artist Jason Shiga. And he and the folks at Numberphile have created an explanatory video of how it works. It’s basically a simple binary system using…

Tech News Jennifer Ouellette Aug 14

How Much Pee Would It Take to Turn an Olympic Pool Green?

One of the frothiest stories to bubble forth from the shit-tastic Rio Olympics this week was the sudden, inexplicable greening of not one, but two Olympic pools. Actually, there is an explanation: algae. Lots of them. Algae thrive in warm, still water, especially when there’s plenty of sunlight to break down pesky, antimicrobial compounds like…

Tech News Maddie Stone Aug 12

How Futurama Made Math and Science Funny

Futurama may not make me laugh as hard as other comedies, but its vision of the future and all the shenanigans that come with it have always been enjoyable to watch (throughout all its various cancellations and comebacks). Kaptain Kristian makes the case that Futurama is special because it was the “master of hiding brilliance…

Sploid Casey Chan Jul 19

These Mysterious Ultra-Rare Crystals Probably Formed in Outer Space

Quasicrystals are unusual materials in which the atoms are arranged in regular patterns that nonetheless never repeat themselves. Most are man-made in the lab; only one case of naturally occurring quasicrystals has been found thus far. And now physicists believe they’ve figured out how that happened. In a paper published today in the Proceedings of…

Physics & Chemistry Jennifer Ouellette Jun 13

Sneaky Trick Uses Math Magic to Guess Your Cards

Math is basically magic. So it’s no surprise that a clever use of the Fibonacci numbers—a series of numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers—and a super-slick shuffling method can combine for a card trick that makes it impossibly easy to guess the number…

Sploid Casey Chan Jun 2

Digital Music Couldn’t Exist Without the Fourier Transform

This is the Fourier Transform. You can thank it for providing the music you stream every day, squeezing down the images you see on the Internet into tiny little JPG files, and even powering your noise-canceling headphones. Here’s how it works. The equation owes its power to the way that it lets mathematicians quickly understand…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe May 30

The World’s Biggest Ever Math Proof Is a Whopping 200TB

If you think you had a hard time filling out pages of algebra at school, spare a thought for the three mathematicians who have just published the world’s largest ever proof. It takes up 200TB of storage space. Nature reports that the team—from the Universities of Texas at Austin, Kentucky and Swansea—made use of bounteous…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe May 27

A Harry Potter Theory That Both Explains Harry’s Tiny Class and Will Ruin Your Day

Ever wonder how there could only be about 18 Gryffindors in Harry’s Hogwarts class and that J.K. Rowling has said there were 1,000 students at the school? Well, a fan theory has an answer… a depressing, depressing answer. Buzzfeed did the math and, assuming that all the houses have roughly equal numbers of students, there…

Movies Katharine Trendacosta May 26

Earth’s Core Is Younger Than We Thought

Without a Tardis, a journey to the center of the Earth might be your best option for traveling to the past. Because of the way gravity warps spacetime, physicists have now calculated that the Earth’s core is 2.5 years younger than its surface. This represents a much more significant time dilation effect than anybody realized.…

Physics & Chemistry Maddie Stone May 24

The Mathematical Explanation for Why You Can’t Catch a Falling Dollar Bill with Your Fingers

Here’s a really interesting mathematical explanation on how the “catch a dollar” trick works. You know the trick: a person holds a bill vertically and says you can keep the bill if you can catch the dollar with your fingers when it drops. You never catch it. It’s really hard! Why? As Numberphile explains, the…

Sploid Casey Chan May 13

Truly Interesting Animation Breaks Down the Story Behind Zero and Why It’s So Important

The story of how zero came to be and the history of math is actually quite fascinating! They should have taught us that instead of actual math in high school, if you ask me. Thankfully, Hannah Fry tells us in the animation story below all we need to know. There’s fascinating bits about how the…

Sploid Casey Chan Apr 14

Now We Know How Many Ways We Can Arrange 128 Tennis Balls

Here’s a question worthy of the ball boy at Wimbledon: if you have 128 tennis balls packed into a container, how many different ways can you arrange them? Answer: 10250 — more than the entire number of subatomic particles in the universe. That’s the conclusion of a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge…

Physics & Chemistry Jennifer Ouellette Feb 16

Check Out the Mind Bending Patterns That Come Out of Random Dot Patterns

Get enough dots together and your faulty eyeballs start seeing things. With random dot patterns, a simple move of the dots by a few degrees can create trippy concentric circles or wild swirls that move all around the paper. With a more uniform grid of dots, the pattern looks like you’re jumping through a portal…

Sploid Casey Chan Feb 9

Scientists Reignite Thirty-Year-Old Debate About Glass With New Calculation

How Many Chicken McNuggets Are in the Big Chicken?

Reminder: Mike Pence Voted Against Recognizing Pi Day

These Black Female Mathematicians Should Be Stars in the Blockbusters of Tomorrow

10 Tips to Improve Your Mental Math Ability

A Quick Animated History of Why We Use the Numbers We Use

If Einstein Is Right Santa Is Even Fatter Than We Thought

This Paper Calculator Adds Via a Series of Tubes

How Much Pee Would It Take to Turn an Olympic Pool Green?

How Futurama Made Math and Science Funny

These Mysterious Ultra-Rare Crystals Probably Formed in Outer Space

Sneaky Trick Uses Math Magic to Guess Your Cards

Digital Music Couldn’t Exist Without the Fourier Transform

The World’s Biggest Ever Math Proof Is a Whopping 200TB

A Harry Potter Theory That Both Explains Harry’s Tiny Class and Will Ruin Your Day

Earth’s Core Is Younger Than We Thought

The Mathematical Explanation for Why You Can’t Catch a Falling Dollar Bill with Your Fingers

Truly Interesting Animation Breaks Down the Story Behind Zero and Why It’s So Important

Now We Know How Many Ways We Can Arrange 128 Tennis Balls

Check Out the Mind Bending Patterns That Come Out of Random Dot Patterns

In Letter, OpenAI Reportedly Says Elon Musk and Meta Are Coordinating ‘Attacks’ Against It

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