Tag: maths

Mobius Strip Music

A Möbius strip is a surface that only has one side. Take a strip of paper, put a half twist on it, loop the two ends and you’ll have a physical representation of this object. Cartoonist and writer Sam Wilson plays with the twisted paper model in a delightful way.

Wilson composed and punched out a piece of music onto a Möbius strip of paper and cranked it out on a little music box. Listen as he plays the normal melody and then the inverted version where the high notes are now the low notes and vice versa. It’s a beautiful tune. I could listen to it for ever.

[via @WombatSam]

Tags forever, maths, Möbius band, Möbius strip, Music, Sam Wilson

Science & Technology Video Clips

Measuring the Universe

The interactive Scale of the Universe shows us how minuscule and gargantuan elements in our universe can be. But just how do we go about measuring the distances from the Earth to these celestial bodies? This charming animated short from the Royal Observatory Greenwich answers that question, explaining the concepts with easy, familiar analogies.

[via Brain Pickings]

Tags animated short film, candles, galaxies, maths, Measuring the Universe, parallax, planets, Royal Observatory Greenwich, short film, stars

Arty Science & Technology Video Clips

“Perpetual Ocean” Visualization Looks Like a van Gogh Painting

Post author By prawn1
Post date March 27, 2012
No Comments on “Perpetual Ocean” Visualization Looks Like a van Gogh Painting

Every day it’s swirling. The world ocean is a large body of water that covers over 70% of the Earth’s surface and this beautiful time-lapse animation by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio shows the movement of the ocean currents around the continents and islands.

Using data during the period of June 2005 and December 2007, Perpetual Ocean is produced using a complex computation model that is usually used to predict changes in world’s currents. In this case all the facts and figures have been removed, leaving only the curly and swirly patterns that look like they could be part of the starry nightscape in a Vincent van Gogh painting.

For more information on Perpetual Ocean, visit the Scientific Visualization Studio.

[via @JoeyHiFi]

Tags computers, JPL, maths, models, NASA, Perpetual Ocean, science, time-lapse, Vincent van Gogh, visualization

Arty Awesomeness Entertainment Featured Music Video Clips

What Does Tau Sound Like?

Post author By prawn1
Post date July 1, 2011
No Comments on What Does Tau Sound Like?

Someone somewhere in the world has been quoted as saying that maths is music to their ears. If that person is you, then you’ll be pleased as pi to know that musician and YouTube user Michael Blake has composed a melody involving Tau.

Tau is approximately 6.28, so twice as large as pi, and Blake created his amazing music video in praise of it. He applies the numbers one through nine to all the notes in the major scale, and then applies the major, minor, and diminished chords that correspond to those notes — whatever that means, musical maths isn’t my strong point. The video explains it much better and sounds absolutely wonderful. In What Tau Sounds Like, Blake plays the piano, xylophone, guitar, banjo, violin, accordion, and other instruments to create a musical interpretation of Tau to 126 decimal places. Check it out below.

[via Nick de Bruyne on Twitter]

Tags maths, Michael Blake, musical maths, pi, Tau, What Tau Sounds Like

Arty Awesomeness Featured Inspirational Designs

Intricate Cardboard Sculptures Created by Algorithms

Post author By prawn1
Post date March 2, 2011
1 Comment on Intricate Cardboard Sculptures Created by Algorithms

Oh my, maths can indeed be pretty. As an architect and programmer, Michael Hansmeyer uses mathematics a great deal in his life, saying that however complex a task may be, there is an algorithm that can describe it. And through CAD applications and various digital fabrication processes, algorithms can not only be visualized but they can be built. And this is what Hansmeyer did. He created a model of a Greek column and then applied an algorithm to it to enhance the details.

Hansmeyer’s intricately detailed model contained several million faces which standard 3D printers can’t handle so he resorted to a manual, pain-staking method of making his subdivided columns a reality.

The result is a 3D model with between 8 and 16 million faces, but 3D printers can only handle half a million, so Hansmeyer needed an alternative solution to transform his creations from virtual to physical reality. He sliced the column into 2700 pieces and used a laser cutter to create each slice from 1mm-thick cardboard, then reconstructed the column by layering the slices together with a solid wooden core. The whole process only cost $1500 and took about 15 hours, with three laser cutters working in parallel.

Have a look at his incredible cardboard sculptures that he built after the jump.

Tags algorithms, Cardboard Sculptures, columns, computational architecture, fabrication, maths, Michael Hansmeyer, sculptures, subdivision

Arty

Complexity Graphics

Post author By prawn1
Post date August 8, 2010

In her “COMPLEXITY GRAPHICS” series, Russian designer Tatiana Plakhova uses Adobe Illustrator to draw up some amazing geometric forms. The combination of these repeating patterns and shapes seem to create something that looks altogether organic, from the depths of a very strange ocean.

Have a look at her creations after the jump.

Tags illustration, maths, organic, Russia, Tatiana Plakhova

Arty Cautionary Tales

If You Printed The Internet

Post author By prawn1
Post date October 8, 2009
3 Comments on If You Printed The Internet

Reading can be such hell at times. Can you imagine the schlep of reading all the content on the internet? Doing it 24-7, 57 000 years would pass until you were finished complete. And if you were to print and bind the Internet into a book, it would weight 1.2 billion pounds. How do I know this? The Internet told me.

Find out all the mathematics in the neat infographics that lay after the jump.