Rough draft of a sculpture illustrating the electric field lines between two equal and opposite charges.
(Hi! I’m still alive, sorry for ghostin ya tumblr. I stopped posting because my reclusive tendencies have gotten really out of control over the past year or so, but I’m trying to take little baby steps to quittin my bullshit so bear with me! Still makin math art like crazy, so I thought I’d start with sendin u this lil ditty I whipped up a couple weeks ago. Plenty more where this came from, I promise!)
Milk, it does a body good, and we want to make sure it stays that way. In order to help protect the safety of this ingredient found in so many foods, IBM and Cornell University are working on a way to monitor raw milk straight from the source. By sequencing the DNA and RNA of milk and its surrounding microbes, they hope to be able to instantly detect food safety hazards so they don’t have a chance to make it into your glass or onto your plate.
BUT THIS, you want people to drink milk from a cow? The milk is for the calf! Shame on you for spreading the lie that milk is good for the body. It’s proven that milk is not good for humans after the age of 12.
Stop treat animals like they are made for us humans to abuse! There is no humane way to kill or inseminate another living creature!
Hope this is your first and last post propagates for animal abuse!
Dr. Greg Dunn (artist and neuroscientist) and Dr. Brian Edwards (artist and applied physicist) created Self Reflected to elucidate the nature of human consciousness, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behavior of neurons. Self Reflected offers an unprecedented insight of the brain into itself, revealing through a technique called reflective microetching the enormous scope of beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we observe this work of art. Self Reflected was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity.
In Islamic culture, geometry is everywhere. You can find it in mosques, madrasas, palaces and private homes. This tradition began in the 8th century CE during the early history of Islam, when craftsman took preexisting motifs from Roman and Persian cultures and developed them into new forms of visual expression.
This period of history was a golden age of Islamic culture, during which many achievements of previous civilizations were preserved and further developed, resulting in fundamental advancements in scientific study and mathematics. Accompanying this was an increasingly sophisticated use of abstraction and complex geometry in Islamic art, from intricate floral motifs adorning carpets and textiles, to patterns of tile work that seemed to repeat infinitely, inspiring wonder and contemplation of eternal order.
Despite the remarkable complexity of these designs, they can be created with just a compass to draw circles and a ruler to make lines within them, and from these simple tools emerges a kaleidoscope multiplicity of patterns. So how does that work? Well, everything starts with a circle. The first major decision is how will you divide it up? Most patterns split the circle into four, five or six equal sections. And each division gives rise to distinctive patterns.
There’s an easy way to determine whether any pattern is based on fourfold, fivefold, or sixfold symmetry. Most contain stars surrounded by petal shapes. Counting the number of rays on a starburst, or the number of petals around it, tells us what category the pattern falls into. A star with six rays, or surrounded by six petals, belongs in the sixfold category. One with eight petals is part of the fourfold category, and so on.
There’s another secret ingredient in these designs: an underlying grid. Invisible, but essential to every pattern, the grid helps determine the scale of the composition before work begins, keeps the pattern accurate, and facilitates the invention of incredible new patterns. Let’s look at an example of how these elements come together.
We’ll start with a circle within a square, and divide it into eight equal parts. We can then draw a pair of criss-crossing lines and overlay them with another two. These lines are called construction lines, and by choosing a set of their segments, we’ll form the basis of our repeating pattern.
Many different designs are possible from the same construction lines just by picking different segments. And the full pattern finally emerges when we create a grid with many repetitions of this one tile in a process called tessellation.
By choosing a different set of construction lines, we might have created this any of the above patterns. The possibilities are virtually endless.
We can follow the same steps to create sixfold patterns by drawing construction lines over a circle divided into six parts, and then tessellating it, we can make something like the above.
Here’s another sixfold pattern that has appeared across the centuries and all over the Islamic world, including Marrakesh, Agra, Konya and the Alhambra.
Fourfold patterns fit in a square grid, and sixfold patterns in a hexagonal grid.
Fivefold patterns, however, are more challenging to tessellate because pentagons don’t neatly fill a surface, so instead of just creating a pattern in a pentagon, other shapes have to be added to make something that is repeatable, resulting in patterns that may seem confoundingly complex, but are still relatively simple to create.
This more than 1,000-year-old tradition has wielded basic geometry to produce works that are intricate, decorative and pleasing to the eye. And these craftsman prove just how much is possible with some artistic intuition, creativity, dedication along with a great compass and ruler.
“One day it just snapped in my mind how the number of rows of the first matrix has to match the number of columns in the second matrix, which means they must perfectly align when the second matrix is rotated by 90°. From there, the second matrix trickles down, “combing” the values in the first matrix. The values are multiplied and added together. In my head, I called this the “waterfall method”, and used it to perform my calculations in the university courses. It worked.”
Today, we had an emergency response drill. This involves flashing lights and loud sounds. I have a neurological disorder that makes this type of even very uncomfortable.
The hour before this drill, I had an incredibly disappointing interaction with one of my work supervisors. My reaction was much stronger than I might have anticipated on a theoretical level, and I was still reeling when the drill started… so I didn’t take steps to avoid the sensory barrage. The loud noises happen first, and I was already starting to spiral the drain.
And then…
And then one of my students caught my attention. She told me the lights were about to start flashing, and asked if I needed to go outside. I was so far gone I couldn’t really process how to do the ‘get outside’ thing. Like, I couldn’t find ‘outside.’ So she sherpa’d me to safety, just in time to avoid the flashy lights that would have triggered a full meltdown.
So, here’s the thing: I have mentioned my disorder to her once, in passing, by name only. She literally remembered that I had a condition, and took steps to know what emergency protocol I might need in certain situations. I thanked her profusely, and asked how she had learned to be so sensitive to stuff like that. She told me she has a younger sister with a disability, and so she understands how significant the timely attention of a knowledgeable ally can be.
It is significant. It makes a world of difference.
She saved the day for me.
She kept me from having to leave in the middle of the day, from having to cancel my afternoon discussions.
And, at that particular moment, when I was still shocked by an instance of the human capacity to harm, she reminded that their capacity to help, to be compassionate, to care about one another, is far greater still.
Before my afternoon discussion, I was still straight-up heartbroken by that morning’s interaction, physically sick from sadness. Those discussions cured me completely. I am astounded by the ability my students have to delete bad feelings from my mental hard drive. I can’t stress enough how much just being around them improved my mood.
Let me talk about some things my students have done this semester (in addition to the above):
1. Defended other students against disparaging remarks from a classmate with ZERO tolerance, before I even had a chance/need to step in.
2. Noticed a Trans Ally pin on my bag, and checked with me to make sure they are all using my preferred pronouns.
3. Asked me and the inquirer if I they could answer another student’s question, because “Riley just explained that really well to me, and I want to practice explaining it to others…plus, you explained [other topic] to me last week and I owe you.”
4. Stayed after class to tell me I was doing a great job of explaining a tough topic, because they noticed that I was worried people weren’t catching on. They said, “It’s still tough to understand because it’s a lot to think about, but you’ve made it MUCH better.”
It is such a joy and privilege to do math with these folks. This generation of university-age students consists of the most sensitive, compassionate, hard-working, and tolerant individuals I have ever met. The events I listed were observed across my four separate teaching assignments, with both upper and lower division students. It’s not just one class or one year, it’s a culture, and it’s an awesome one. When I am asked why my attitude about the future is so positive, they are the only reason I need.
