Beyond Euclid - #146
Welcome to Beyond Euclid #146, the newsletter for the best mathematics and science stuff of the week. I am Ali, and I curate cool math and science stuff every week to help you have a better week.
📰 Hello again! This is Ali, and I'm thrilled to present the latest edition of Beyond Euclid for your weekend read. This issue stands out as a personal favorite of mine, surpassing many others in its depth and intrigue. I, still, truly enjoying sharing exceptional content from the internet with you each week. Your support means the world to me, so please consider liking this issue, sharing it with your friends, or becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you for your continued encouragement!
• The Houghton Library at Harvard University just published the digital copy of "The First Six Books of Euclid" by Oliver Byrne, originally published back in 1847. This book is something special, as it transforms learning geometry into an almost artistic experience with its use of vibrant, colorful diagrams. You can also read my long Medium post about this book. The Long Story of the Oldest Math Book: Euclid’s Elements
• Suspended Stone Circle by Ken Unsworth. Beautiful.
• 25 Beautiful Math Documentaries to Make Students Love Math. I did a huge search for you and curated over 25 great mathematics documentaries for you! These documentaries are very “interesting” because they present either actual mathematics, mathematicians, or mathematics history.
• Martin Gardner always believed that mathematical principles underpin the structure of reality in a profound way that transcends our physical experience. From the patterns in nature to the laws governing the cosmos, mathematics provides a universal language through which these phenomena can be described and understood. It's not merely a human construct, but a discovery of inherent truths that exist independently of observation.
• Scientists have been taking a closer look at Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, Starry Night, and discovered some physics. It turns out the swirling patterns and vibrant colors aren't just beautiful—they're a representation of real atmospheric physics. The team found that the curves and shapes in the painting resemble Kolmogorov's theory, which talks about how energy moves from big patterns to smaller ones in nature. Plus, the way the painting's colors vary in brightness matches Batchelor's scaling, another theory about how energy transfers happen on small scales.
• Time-lapse videos of soap bubbles merging with ferrofluid are both eerie and mesmerizing. Kim Pimmel mixed ordinary soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid to tell a strangely captivating story. Through the use of macro lenses and time-lapse photography, Pimmel captures how black ferrofluid and colorful dyes dance through bubble formations, guided by the unseen forces of capillary action and magnetism.
• This week I learned that there’s a Venn diagram in every doughnut.
• I came across an extraordinary piece that blended the Fibonacci spiral with Islamic geometric design. Designed by Anita Chowdry, this design is utterly remarkable and deserves a closer look.
• This week, I found NASA’s really cool project beyond just space exploration. It is called NASA Landsat where you can see your name spelled out using satellite images. Every letter in your name is represented by different images, and if you refresh the page, you get a brand new combination. It's surprising that NASA comes up with creative stuff like this, and I honestly love it.
• Estonian scientists have discovered that too much screen time can be bad for kids' language development. They found that no matter how kids used screens, it didn’t help their language skills. If parents used screens a lot, their kids tended to do the same. But kids who spent less time in front of screens performed better in grammar and vocabulary.
Playing video games seemed to be particularly harmful to language skills, whether it was the parents or kids doing the gaming.
• Have you ever noticed those little plastic clips on bread bags and wondered about them? Well, there's actually a whole group that's been studying these clips since 1994! They're called the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group, or HORG for short. These clips, which you might know as bread tags, bread ties, or bread buckles, are everywhere in supermarkets, keeping our bagged bread fresh. But HORG takes a fun and curious approach to them, like they're living creatures, even calling them "oclupanids."
• The Carpentopod is one of the coolest inventions you're likely to come across—a walking coffee table crafted by Dutch game designer Giliam de Carpentier. It all started in 2008 when de Carpentier developed software just for fun to create optimized walking mechanisms. Years later, after mastering electronics and woodworking, he transformed one of these designs into a functional, wireless walking wooden table known as the Carpentopod.
• Grab a nice cup of coffee, put your headphones on, and dive into this incredible 8-minute video that takes you on a drone's eye tour of the stunning coastline of Antarctica. This isn't just your average flight over icy landscapes—it's an immersive, almost otherworldly experience.
• These Batmobile Crocs made me look. They are really a good gift idea. You can get them here.