PARTY TRICKS I AM PRACTICING

3.14
15 (one more)
92 ( add the first digits and reverse: 1 + 1 = 2, 4 + 5= 9; 29<=>92)
65 (age of retirement norm)
35 (age of last pregnancy)
89 (grad year, Berlin Wall fell)
79 ( -10)
3238 (watch for the mirror)
46 (current age)
26 (-20)
43
3832 (mirror closes)
79 (repeat)
50 (half a century)
28 (the perfect age)
84 (LA Olympics)
1971 (YOB)
69
39 (-30)
93 (mirrors 39)
75 (3/4 of a century)

THE CHEMISTRY OF FIREWORKS

FIBONACCI FAIL

My lone tulip that survived being eaten by squirrels - 3-6-6!

One of my favourite sequences that turned up in my daughter's elementary school math has a name, Fibonacci, as it approximates the golden ratio ( two quantities whose ratio is the same as the sum to the larger of the two), , and the more I learned about its application, the more I love it. It starts with 0, then 1, and then it adds the two previous numbers to get the next. It looks like this:

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1587 2584 4181 6765 10946 17711 28657 46368

 I was thinking about this coming back from a fossil tour downtown, where we saw gastropod (snail) and sunflower coral fossils. I wanted to find more patterns. I immediately turned to my solitary precious blooming tulip (squirrels love to take a bite, knocking them to the ground on biting off their head), and was disappointed to find no such sequence! Here are a few inspiration patterns from a worthwhile kid-friendly Mother's Day talk from the very special McGill Redpath Natural History Museum.

There are many examples to find, though, even if tulips seem to buck the rule. Spiral galaxies and hurricane winds viewed by satellite, pine cones, artichokes, and pineapples, tree branches and leaves on branches, sunflowers and uncurling ferns, nautilus and snail shells, and even red cabbage in cross section are all beautiful exams in nature. If you want a simple cypher, or are stopping to smell the flowers, or searching a building stone wall for samples, look for a Fibonacci sequence near you!

Sunflower coral in Tyndall limestone at Le Chateau Apartments

on Sherbrooke street

Maclurite snail shells in Trenton limestone edging the Mount Royal Club from 285 million years ago

SUMMER BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM GRANDPA

My dad sent a kit of elastic string, dowels and caps for my daughter's summer birthday. He had made one for his other granddaughter and his own garage, and thought it would be enjoyed by her also. The first time we tried to put it together, it was more of a two dimensional object! It hung in shame for six months on a window crank, until my daughter's actual winter birthday, when I was inspired to try again.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to follow this video (stopping and starting and rewinding probably ten times to do it!) and successfully built this mobile on the second go.

The tensegrity icosahedron  was "invented" by Buckminster Fuller, based on 20 triangles. The definition of tensegrity, as per Mr. Fuller, is "islands of compression inside an ocean of tension." ICOS comes from the Greek for 20. HEDRON means seat or base. The icosahedron has 20 triangles, 30 bases and 12 vertices, each with 5 triangular faces meeting. In the model below, there are 6 wooden struts and 24 string interfaces for the total of 30 bases.

This basic idea, here in Montreal, is most famously seen at the Biosphere,  a geodesic polyhedron, designed by the architect Buckminster Fuller, at the 1967 Olympic site; formerly the US Pavillon. It seems he had been awarded a US patent, but the idea was actually invented years prior by an East German engineer named Walther Bauersfeld, who created the first geodesic dome, based on the icosahedron structure, and the genesis of the modern planetarium.

BIRTHDAY TENSEGRITY ICOSAHEDRON

MY BEST QUOTE OF THE DAY

I was at work and asked the office fixer to look at the tonopen (that measures eye pressure) yet again, because it was not calibrating on a couple of attempts, so I wouldn't be able to trust the result.

It was a busy day, and he came to me to ask me to withdraw my request, claiming that each time he takes it to the technical department they try it and it works.

I understood he really didn't need to have another thing to do that day, but this wasn't going to be satisfactory to ignore the problems with a vital machine.

I said, "It can't just work once. It has to work most of the time."

I must have been convincing, because the resident laughed, and he took it away, begrudgingly, to be looked at again.

RULES FOR DIVISIBILITY

I helped my grade six daughter with her homework tonight and learned things I never knew.
Here's how to find out if there are multiples in any given number. Here's the youtube video that we learned it all from:

1.No explanation necessary. The answer is yes.
2. Any even number is divisible by 2.

Okay, this is where it gets interesting:

3. If you add up any number, your sum, if divisible by 3, is going to be divisible by three. For example, 458, 230 adds up to 22, which is not divisible by 3. This also eliminates the possibility of it being divisible by 6 or 9. If 22 is too big a number for you, you can add the digits together to get 4, and no for sure that it is not divisible by 3. Another example, 72,452, which adds up to 20, also not divisible by 3. Another example, 383, 655 adds up to 30. This is a number divisible by 3.

4. For divisibility by four, you just need to look at the last 2 numbers, no matter how big the number. For the numbers above: 458, 230, the number 30 is not divisible by 4. In 72, 451, the number 51 is not divisible by 4. Lastly, in the number 383, 655, the number 55 is not divisible by 4.

5. Five is another one most people recognize. If the number ends in 0 or 5, it is divisible by 5.

6. To be divisible by 6, it should be an even number also divisible by 3.

7. To be divisible by 9, add up the numbers, and divide the sum.

Hope that helps!