NonOedipal Snakes On a NonOedipal Plane.

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But here’s the thing: if someone asked me five minutes ago what tangled-up snakes demented checkerboards and crazy twisty surfaces have in common, what would you have answered?

This is why I love mathematics. The moment when you realize that something seemingly arbitrary and confusing is actually part of something. It’s better than the cleverest possible ending to any crime show or mystery novel, because that’s only the beginning.

There’s more wonderful doodling at her website, or on youtube. All full of math-y goodness, puns, denunciation of poor teaching, stop-action video and a remarkable lack of commas. (Does she ever inhale?)

Binary trees
Infinity elephants
Stars

You can show these to people, and it’s possible they won’t know they learned some math. Sneaky.

Why Don't You Glide?

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“Pointless, action-free and totally mesmerising”

Both glides were filmed by sticking a – relatively cheap – digital camera out of the window of a train as it arrived at a station. The ‘trick’ is the camera collects images at a rate of 210 per second – but the film is played back at 30 frames per second. So, every seven seconds of footage that you watch corresponds to 1 real second. At least at the start, one real second is plenty of time for someone to move into, then out of, the camera’s field of view, but isn’t enough time for them to really do much: hence, the frozen effect. It breaks down towards the end not because I’m doing something clever with the frame rates (captured or replayed), but simply because the train was stopping! Thus, as it decelerated, any given person would be in view for longer, and have more time to point an arm, take a few steps along the platform, or maybe even notice me at the window. Any such action captured is still slowed down seven-fold during playback, just as with my usual static captures.

Neat effect. I will have to try this sometime.

Thar She Blows!

Well, he. Swimmer blows some bubble-rings, while another swimmer drops a bottle cap into it, and the cap swirls around the toroid due to the turbulence.

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Because I Can

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Butane from a lighting wand, dipped into bubble solution, making butane bubbles. When I drop a match in, they burn. In wonderful slo-mo. Note: dipping a lighting wand into soapy water tends to impede the flint’s ability to light the butane.

Those Wheels are Hot

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Commentary from Gizmodo

What you’re watching is a piece by artist Chris Burden called Metropolis II, in which every hour 100,000 cars pass through the city of wood block, tiles, Legos and Lincoln Logs. It’s a follow up to Burden’s Metropolis I, which was built on a similar concept but employed only 80 cars. Metropolis II is currently being constructed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Visualizing Your Microwave Oven

I don’t have a microwave oven, but I do have this big clock that can cook things.

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The guy who did the video has a blog, and from that I’m a little surprised at some of the commentary in the video.

The absorption by the “salty water” isn’t correct — water isn’t absorbing the microwaves because it’s salty; it’s a polar molecule and will respond to the oscillating electric field all by itself. Ions would do this too, so having a dissolved salt probably doesn’t hurt or even helps, but distilled water will absorb microwaves and heat up. This is immediately followed by “turns the microwaves into heat,” which treats heat like a substance. The water is heated, but does not contain heat.

You also can’t see steam coming out of the glass, because you can’t see steam — it’s the vapor phase of water, and is not visible. What you can see are small water droplets, after the vapor has begun to coalesce. Yeah, I know that steam is used colloquially like this, but I expect better of a scientist.

"Geocaching has Kept Me Safer"

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Sgt. Byrd has been geocaching for years. He says the skills that geocaching instills; situational awareness, an eye for the unusual and quick detective work, help keep him safe when he’s finding and defusing bombs.

Just so you know, the part where things blow up is not the geocaching part.