a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3340 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Numberphile: Powers of two

Sometimes I think they're just dicking around on the calculator.





RicePaddy  ·  3340 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wouldn't be surprised. In one of my classes today we had a guest lecturer who's a researcher in 3D printing. He was showing us all the cool stuff they can print (prosthetics, gears, aluminium/bronze stuff, all the things you kind of expect), and then he came to this weird-looking plastic, porous thing.

Apparently the maths people got curious about what would happen if you fed an abstract equation into the 3D printer. So they did it. And now they have this weird, sci-fi looking space coral thing.

I don't know what the point of it was, but hey, at least now we know how to make space corals.

user-inactivated  ·  3340 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Five bucks says that's how the first metal alloys came about.

"Hmm. Gee. I wonder what would happen if I mix tin and copper together."