Elaine Krajenke Ellison is a retired math teacher who makes quilts. Her patterns represent math concepts in a beautiful way.
Quilts serve as a visual introduction to mathematical concepts that allows students to explore mathematics as they gain geometric insights. My quilts will engage the viewer in mathematical visualization, helping to further the role of problem solving.
A Norway spruce growing in Sweden has a root system that has been growing for 9,550 years! The tree is only about 13 feet tall, but the trunk is not the first first one grown from the roots. Leif Kullman, professor at Umeå University led the team that discovered the tree’s age.
The spruce's stems or trunks have a lifespan of around 600 years, "but as soon as a stem dies, a new one emerges from the same root stock," Kullman explained. "So the tree has a very long life expectancy."
The age of the root system was determined by radiocarbon dating.
Trees much older than 9,550 years would be impossible in Sweden, because ice sheets covered the country until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 years ago, Kullman noted.
Stringwave is a seemingly simple physics toy that can keep you busy for a while! Change the settings and parameters and see what your waves and echos are like. This is something my grandmother would call "a play-pretty" and my father the scientist would call "addictive". Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
I can’t imagine how much time this took to set up and rehearse. This guy plays the Super Mario Brothers theme on bottles with a remote-control car! Just tuning the bottles would take me all day, then another day to work out the timing, then I’d probably break quite a few. -via Boing Boing
96 years ago today, April 14th, 1912, the last meal was served aboard the Titanic. First class passengers were served a ten-course masterpiece. Later that night, the ship collided with an iceberg. 1517 people died when the ship sank; 723 were rescued. Cooking Monster takes a detailed look at the menu that night and how the dishes were prepared. Link -via Grow-A-Brain
The ‘sandhogs” who dug the subway line between Brooklyn and Manhattan used pressurized air to support their work. Occasionally, a hole would develop, and the response was to stick a sandbag in it. Sometimes this was not enough, as Dick Creedon found out on March 28th, 1905. He was sucked into the soil above the tunnel, pushed through the river, and blasted thirty feet into the air -and lived to tell about it! He later told the New York Times,
“Pooh! Pooh! It didn’t amount to such a lot. There were the four of us, and we were looking for a little trouble with the riverbed. Jack Hughes yells for bags, and as the boys pass them up I grabs them and puts them at the hole when I was drawed into the flow and shot out at the other end. Then all the sudden I strikes water and opens my eyes. I was flying through the air, and before I comes down I had a fine view of the city.”
Creedon had another experience with pressurized air sending him through the mud, when he broke the barrier between the two working ends of the dig. Read the stories of Dick Creedon and other “geyser riders” at Curious Expeditions. Link
The new parking garage at the Sant Monica Civic Center is stunning, and it’s on its way to becoming LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, too!
A solar photovoltaic array on the roof provides shade for top level parking and on-site renewable energy. The materials used in construction were recycled and finished with low-VOC paints and finishes. The building envelope utilizes low-e glazing to decrease heating and cooling loads and the mechanicals are energy efficient. A storm-drain water-treatment system helps reduce tainted runoff from directly entering the hydrosphere and greywater harvesting provides for landscaping and on-site facilities.
The garage has spaces set aside for electric vehicles, and offers free bike parking. However, Inhabitat points out that a “green” parking facility may be seen as an oxymoron, no matter how many environmentally-friendly features it has. Link -via Digg
The Giant Amazon Water Lily, or Victoria amazonica {wiki} is the largest water lily in the world. And it throws its weight around, too! Sir David Attenborough narrates this time-lapse video. -via Digg
You may think you know a lot about Star Wars, but how much do you know about John William’s musical score? Try your skills out with today’s lunchtime quiz at mental_floss. I scored 70%, which set the average because I was the first one to take the quiz! http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14108
You probably prepare yourself for your children asking questions about the facts of life, but children are full of questions about everything, especially things you never thought about the answer to. Why does hair go gray? The first answer you think of is, “because children drive parents crazy,” but that won’t satisfy their curiosity. Why is urine yellow? I didn’t know the correct answer to that one, and I also didn’t know bilirubin was named after William Rueben. Here are eight such questions, with the short answers for each. Link -via Digg
Graffiti artist Banksy was at it again over the weekend, painting an indictment of closed circuit TV in central London. Despite the presence of a CCTV camera, he erected a three-story scaffolding and a plastic cover under which he painted his masterpiece. Not only can the real cameras be seen just to the right of the graffiti, a policeman with a camera is part of the artwork. Link -via Fark
The Flora London Marathon was held yesterday, and was won by Martin Lel of Kenya who set a record time of 2 hours, 5 minutes, 15 seconds. It was his third win in four years. See the list of winners, and read on for updates on runners previously featured at Neatorama.
Buster Martin ran the marathon yesterday in slightly more than ten hours, but officials from the Guinness Book of World Records are holding off on certifying him as the oldest marathon runner ever. Martin does not have proof of his age. Evidence has surfaced that Martin is a mere 94 years old, not 101 as previously claimed.
Amarilis Espinoza, of Guinesss World Records, said: “We’re not denying that he is obviously an old man running the marathon. But at this point he has not yet sent any documents we can use as definitive proof for a record attempt.”
Four of the six Maasai warriors from Tanzania completed the race in 5 hours, 24 minutes, but one was taken to the hospital, and another accompanied him. They raised at least £26,000 in their quest for a water system for their village, which is expected to be more once the donations are counted.
Dave Heeley crossed the finish line in 5 hours, 20 minutes, and completed his goal of being the first blind runner to accomplish seven marathons in seven days on seven continents.
If the story of Star Wars had been set in World War II, these would be the action figures sold to support the movies. This set of action figures was customized by Sillof. Yes, he could’ve cheated and substituted Indiana Jones for Han Solo, but he didn’t. See the collection at Gizmodo. Link
Also see Sillof’s Steampunk Star Wars figures. Link
Try to figure out what these acrobats are illustrating before it's revealed at the end of the ad. Whatever they are doing, they’re good at it! -via Digg
Dark Roasted Blend has a collection of photos from various nuclear research facilities in Russia.
Some of them are buried deep in the Caucasus mountains, others are lurking in abandoned salt mines underneath forgotten villages, yet others are set up deep underwater in Lake Baikal - all are fully functional, facilitating cutting-edge research, with scientific progress routinely made on glaringly obsolete equipment.
And they come with their own quirks, too, like an Orthodox church sharing space with a neutrino detection facility in an old salt mine, or the real danger of falling rocks at the entrance to another facility. Link
