Author: Vicente Valdes Pineda
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Making Math with Vicente
Making Math was a great opportunity for me to see the beauty of mathematics through 5 different projects, each of which explored a new mathematical concept and used some technology that I was previously unfamiliar with. This blogpost is an overview of everything I’ve done for this class, and walks through each of the projects…
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Parametric Curve Posters
For our final Making Math project, we decided to create visually-aesthetic posters of parametric curves. This class has truly made us appreciate the beauty of mathematics, and we thought it’d be super cool to wrap up the semester by creating posters that highlight just that – how a relatively simple mathematical equation can create aesthetically…
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The Diabolical Cube
Cubic Puzzles Explained Cubic Block Puzzles are a type of puzzle that have been around for over 100 years. According to Puzzle Maker Stewart Coffin, the earliest reference to a 3x3x3 cubic block puzzle appears in the 1893 book Puzzles Old and New by Professor Hoffman. This puzzle was named “The Diabolical Cube”, and consisted…
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Creating a Gömböc
The Gömböc is the world’s first homogeneous, self-righting shape (it even has a Guinness World Record). First hypothesized in 1995 by the Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold, it wasn’t until 2007 that Hungarian mathematicians Gabor Domoks and Peter Varkonyi created the first computer model, and then a physical model of a Gömböc (New York Times). What…
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Sphericoin Art
For Project 0.A, we decided to create art with a simple sphericon. Sphericons are defined as shapes that are obtained by “rotating a symmetric polygon about a mirror axis to get a solid of revolution, cutting that solid into two equal pieces, and then putting the pieces back together differently” (MOMATH). For this project, we…
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Lucie and Vicente’s Project Ideas
The Gömböc Gömböc in the Stable Equilibrium Position, Wikipedia The Gömböc is described as “the shape that shouldn’t exist”. We learned more about it by watching this Youtube video by The Action Lab, which explained that this is the only known homogenous shape to have just 2 equilibrium points; one stable and one unstable. The…