Author Archives: ErkDemon
Here’s another geometrical object that, if you believed basic school textbooks, should be impossible. You know how they taught you that carbon only comes in three forms, diamond, graphite and soot, and that other configurations were geometrically impos…
It took mathematicians a while to realise that infinities came in different sizes. The problem was an inadequacy of language. All “infinities” are infinite, but some are a little more infinite than others. For instance, “infinity-squared” gives an inf…
It took mathematicians a while to realise that infinities came in different sizes. The problem was an inadequacy of language. All “infinities” are infinite, but some are a little more infinite than others. For instance, “infinity-squared” gives an inf…
Progress in fundamental theoretical physics now seems to have been on hold for quite a while.I thought that the situation was summed up quite nicely by one of the characters in “The Big Bang Theory” (an improbably funny TV sitcom about sciencey people)…
Progress in fundamental theoretical physics now seems to have been on hold for quite a while.I thought that the situation was summed up quite nicely by one of the characters in “The Big Bang Theory” (an improbably funny TV sitcom about sciencey people)…
Skytopia have a great set of pages on the search for a 3D version of the Mandelbrot Set. Or at least, for an interesting 3D version of the normal Mandelbrot. It’s easy enough to produce fractal solids that have a Mandelbrot on one plane, and if you …
Skytopia have a great set of pages on the search for a 3D version of the Mandelbrot Set. Or at least, for an interesting 3D version of the normal Mandelbrot. It’s easy enough to produce fractal solids that have a Mandelbrot on one plane, and if you …
When used as a pump, the Tesla turbine is one of the simplest devices that exists. Its main component is simply a spinning disc – the disc is immersed in a fluid (like air, or water), the moving surface couples frictionally with the surface of…
When used as a pump, the Tesla turbine is one of the simplest devices that exists. Its main component is simply a spinning disc – the disc is immersed in a fluid (like air, or water), the moving surface couples frictionally with the surface of…
In the story, an Emperor asks his mathematician to solve a difficult problem.In payment, the mathematician asks for a chessboard with one grain of rice on the first square, two on the next, four on the one after that, eight on the next, and so on. The …
