Rather than serve only to be hooked, sliced, or shanked into the near distance, chased by a volley of insults, hundreds of red and blue golf balls have been put towards a magnificent three-dimensional Sierpinski Triangle (or tetrahedron, in this instance).

A use for golf balls - maths fractal pyramid

To those otherwise unversed in Sierpinski’s Triangle (also known as a ‘gasket’), it’s a beautifully elegant fractal.

See how successively small triangular ’subtractions’ from the main triangle produce a lovely, almost threadlike, fractal pattern. The rules for creating this are simple, and can be repeated ad infinitum.

Sierpinski Triangle (Wikimedia)

(Wikipedia)

You don’t even have to start with a triangle to end up with a triangular-shaped Sierpinski fractal. Try it!

Or, better, try the ‘Chaos Game‘, an exotic-sounding name for something you can play with just pencil, paper, ruler, and die:

(Wikipedia)

[Via Make Blog]

As comedy maths puzzlers go, this one is a little forced, but nevertheless fun to share. I confess it took The God of Whizz a few goes to figure out that Pi = ‘pie’ (look at the scribbly reflected numbers).

Despite this neat coincidence, I somehow suspect that sharing this fancy formula in an exam or test won’t get you extra credit…

(via RedEye Puzzler)

[Props to Keat, via BoingBoing]

Now carry on.

Some of them look a little contrived, but nevertheless almost give you the idea of the numbers that lie just below the surface of everything. And that The God of Whizz likes.

(via Kottke.org)

With the help of a pen, paper, ruler, set-square and some patience, you can make your very own honeycomb-like Voronoi Diagram (via Metafilter).

“Woo”, I hear you cry, “why on earth would I want to do that?”
Besides the simple pleasure of learning maths and general principles of shape, space and measurement (which Whizz Education can help you with), a Voronoi Diagram might help you understand more about the world. The God of Whizz will give you three good reasons:

It is used in derivations of the capacity of a wireless network.

In climatology, Voronoi diagrams are used to calculate the rainfall of an area, based on a series of point measurements. In this usage, they are generally referred to as Thiessen polygons.

Voronoi diagrams are used to study the growth patterns of forests and forest canopies.

Voronoi diagrams are also used in computer graphics to procedurally generate some kinds of organic looking textures.

In robot navigation, Voronoi diagrams are used to find clear routes. If the points are obstacles, the edges of the graph will be the routes furthest from those obstacles.

If you’re a Key Stage 3, or high school, teacher, why not explore Voronoi diagrams with your students?

Take a square of 8 x 8 units = 64 square units. Divide it into two triangles of 3 units x 8 units and two polygons with two sides of 5 units and one side of 3 units and rearrange those four pieces into a rectangle – see above. The resultant rectangle will be 5 units by 13 units = 65 square units! One square unit out of nothing?

Without giving too much away, the apparent paradox of taking one shape and making a larger shape using the same pieces in fact isn’t a paradox at all. It’s more of a sneak.

I won’t link directly to a solution, but if you want one, I suggest you give the excellent ‘Cut the Knot‘ website a try.

We suggest you explore their website for puzzles that will draw on and enrich your child’s experience with our maths tutor.

The wives of three English country gentlemen all became pregnant at about the same time. Two of these gentlemen provided the traditional cow hide as a bedcovering, while the third gentleman sent off to Africa for a hippopotamus skin to use as a bed covering for his wife. The first two women each had a boy while the third was blessed with twin boys.

Which goes to show that: The sons of the squires of the hides is equal to the squire of the hippopotamus.

[groan]

Of course, if you’ve forgotten Pythagoras’ theorem, refresh your memory, or just get some top maths tutoring with Whizz.com!
That’s all! Have a lovely weekend…

ISOSCELES, ISOSCELES,
TWO ANGLE HAVE THE SAME DEGREES
ISOSCELES, ISOSCELES,
YOU LOOK JUST LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE

TWO SIDES THE SAME,
THREE VERTICES
TWO ANGLES HAVE
THE SAME DEGREES

ISOSCELES, ISOSCELES,
YOU LOOK JUST LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE!

I can hear it now! But if you’ve forgotten the tune, here’s a clutch of well-scrubbed choristers singing ‘O, Tannenbaum’ to remind you:

Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci

The great man of art and science was a famously good draftsman with an apparently perfect eye for shape. The short, fun maths test above will have you estimating the positions of parallelogram vertices, centrepoints of circles, midpoints of angles and more. It will test your knowlege of geometry and your natural sense of space and shape, just watch your mouse doesn’t slip.

If you’re looking for something a little more useful, but no less challenging, you should check out any one of the 142 animated Shape and Space lessons in Maths-Whizz…

(via kottke.org)