A Symphony of math-gic, the self-portrait experimentation

Hello all, back again and this time we are going to talk about the quantum relationship of god particles in the surrounding universe and their effect on the snail population of Earth. Of course I made that up but I’m sure someone was interested by that subject; I mean seriously snails are pretty darn amazing. Seriously though today we learn about that crazy thing hipsters do, something called music? I don’t know what the craze is all about, just seems like a cacophony to me, sad face. For those of you who don’t know what a cacophony is, I don’t either but a smart person I met today said it so I decided to use it, I hope it fits in context. Back on track now, it seems I go on a lot of tangents or maybe they are sinusoids, I guess I can’t really know which it is. Speaking of this, music is sinusoidal! Yeah that’s right, all you music majors thought you wouldn’t have to know math, HA. So how does listening work, we’ll figure out music once we figure out how we hear.
Long, short, stiff, limp, sensitive, and funny feeling, all of these adjectives describes an interesting body part. The Ear, that’s right my dirty minded readers, the ear is what we are talking about. So back on track, what happens when sounds go into the ear? I’ll try to refrain from all the boring medical mumbo-jumbo. Well once they are inside the ear these sounds, which from now on we will refer to as “Good Vibrations” travel through the ear to the ear drum, the good vibrations make the ear drum vibrate which makes three bones in the ear vibrate. These bones can amplify, or increase the vibrations from the ear drum. These bones then send these “Gooder Vibrations” to the inner ear also known as the Cochlea which is this weird Fibonacci-spiral-esque part of your ear, when the gooder vibrations get in here essentially they make the water in your Cochlea vibrate and make waves. These waves then hit a membrane and send an electrical signal to the brain, which then gets translated into the sounds we know and love! The way I imagine it is like a stage floating on a lake. The microphone is the eardrum, the three bones are the amplifiers and the lake is the water in the cochlea. As the singer sings into the microphone the water in the lake vibrates and creates waves in a beautiful display or aquatic-music-integration, which is a word I just made up.

So from this we know that music is just “Really Gooder Vibrations” that end up pleasing to our brain . Well what do most people think of when they think of music? Probably the stuff you listen to on your ipod by random artists. Well that’s a small fraction of true music. If we use the oxford definition of music we see that music is “vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion:”. I believe this definition is too narrow. I think of music more as an assortment of sounds that when combined at correct times create a pleasing sound. Perhaps you don’t know what I mean. Well imagine we were in space but we had a magic device that could hear anything anywhere on the world at any time. Now we turn this device on so it can hear everything at once, it sounds like someone is killing a narwhal or something, but say we only took the basic sounds, the sounds of the wind and the trees. Then we added some sounds and eventually we created a medley song of just random sounds we found on Earth. What if every day you could pick out sounds and hold them in your head, and when you hear another you add that and eventually you have your own song! Makes the world a little more beautiful right?

There is more to music though!  Imagine we assigned each music note a color. And each octave lowered or raised the color a tint. When that note is played that color appears on the screen. Imagine your favorite song in color form and how amazing that would be. Why stop there though, what if we imagine that we assign music notes to colors? When you click a color a different music note plays. What if you made a self-portrait and played a symphony of you? I can almost guarantee you it will sound bad but it was a good idea!

For tonight this is all I share with you my fellow mathemites but fear not. Even though the reason I started this blog is ending this week I shall continue to bring you all the mathy goodness I can, in small doses of course, wouldn’t want to injure my loyal reader.
P.S. that last word was not a typo.
Look for music in the world and remember the math behind it. Maybe one day you’ll be able to see how beautiful the world is to me. Bye for now friends I’ll be back, with math-pons? Weap-maths? Whatever.


Hmm, so I guess that other things like the Fibonacci numbers and the Lucas numbers can be used to make beautiful music? I wonder if we hear the Fibonacci symphony in everyday life? I guess if we think of all of the music and sounds in the world it really is a large world. Or is it?

Things that are Golden are In-Phi-nite Fun

HELLO mathmatites, mathematicalulars, people who originate from the great land of Mathia. Back again, and this week we focus on flowers and fibonacci’s!! Oh….. wait, that was last week…. Uhhhhh okay so we can talk about Mathematics….. no that was two weeks ago. How about gold? Yeah gold sounds like a good math concept!! Seems a tad more “sciency” but I think we can make it work right? Its math, anything can happen with math!! But who wants to be restricted to something so menial as gold? Let’s step it up and add in some letters!! You know those things in math that nobody likes because they aren’t “numbers” and they “make things harder”. But who wants to stop at normal American letters!! Let’s add in some Greek letters, like Phi.  So gold and Phi, anyone see where I’m going with this? No? Hmm maybe I have to be more explicit. There once was a man from Tuckahoe, who dreamed of a golden ratio, with a rectangle side b and longer side a, the ratio of a + b / a must be equal to the ratio a/b for it to follow the golden rule. Oh yeah, rhyming skills…. Give me a break I’m a mathematician not a poet, and I do know it ;D.

               

  So obviously our talk for today is going to be about the Golden Ration and Phi. Phi is the Greek letter that in this instance represents the fraction (1 + sqrt(5))/2. If you are like me and always have a calculator with you, you probably didn’t have to read this sentence to see what is calculates to be is approximately 1.618033988749895… and so on and so on. Now you’re probably sitting at home reading this for one of three reasons. One you find it interesting, two you enjoy laughing at my attempts to sound smart by using big words like “addition” and “5” , or three you don’t care but the math intrigues you to the point you have to read this blog all the way through. This isn’t trigonometry so enough of these tangents let’s talk about what the golden ration means in the world. The golden ratio has been said to have interesting aesthetically pleasing properties. It has been said that objects that incorporate the golden ratio are much more visually appealing than those without. After some research I foud out that a few things the incorporate the golden ratio in their design are, The Mona Lisa, The Parthenon, and credit cards. That’s right people get out your rulers with stickers of cartoon characters on it it’s time to measure our credit cards. So take your ruler and measure the longer side of your credit card and then divide that number by the measurement of the shorter side. I bet you’ll get something pretty close to 1.618? Be aware units do not matter here because it is a ratio. But that’s amazing, isn’t it? So after all of those mathematical calculations my brain hurts so let’s go to something more colorful. If you take the color spectrum you know ROY. G. BIV. Anyone remember that old thing? Well these colors are measured in frequencies. It has been said that is you take two colors and then one color that is Phi distance on the frequency scale from one of the others that you chose it will complement those colors better than any other color would. I guess art is math then? Come to think of it, it seems like everything has some math in it right? I bet if you looked hard enough you could see the math in everyday life. I have faith. But back to our subject! Right, gold or golden ratio I guess, why am I telling you this? Well if you think about it maybe mathematicians make the best artists, what if we made a drawing the uses only rectangles and objects that are in the golden ratio? Probably be pretty darn beautiful? I guess math can be beautiful, and if you don’t think it can well I guess haters going to hate as the kids these days say?

Well I think I bored you guys enough I will leave you with two stories today. So the other night I had some recorded tv shows to watch, about 5 or 6 ranging from 30 minutes, to an hour long with commercials (which we all know I skip through anyways) I started at about 8:43 pm and when the last show ended and I was about to turn the TV off the clock turned to 12:00 exactly. The second story is today I filled up my car and I filled exactly 13.333 gallons, I don’t know why that one has any math relation but I’m sure my faithful readers can imagine how awesome I felt filling up for that. Next week I think we are going to get a bit leafy ;D  May the math and the fourth be with you all.

Fruits, Flowers, and Fibonaccis !

I spend a lot of time analyzing and looking deeper into the true mathematics of the world. Every day we see hundreds of millions of examples of amazing and beautiful mathematics. The trees swaying from the wind, the sounds we hear are waves with sinusoidal forms, the way the earth rotates and the clouds move across the sky, the colors you see every day, everything you see in the world is based upon mathematics.

          

      Today’s focus will be on the more obvious flowers, fruits, and of course Fibonaccis of the world. Firstly, for anyone who does not know what a fruit or a flower is, I cannot help you, however I will direct you to these two sites, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers.   Now for those people who read my blog that know what fruits and flowers are you may be asking yourself “What’s a fib….. fibon….? Fibonacci?? Fear not readers all will be revealed soon, and for those of my readers who obviously know everything and don’t think I can provide any new information to them about the Fibonacci sequence I hope I can prove you wrong, if not then my blog succeeded after all =). Anyways, I’m off topic, The Fibonacci sequence was a sequence which has no set discoverer, it was however introduced to the Western European nations by Leonardo of Pisa a.k.a Fibonacci, which obviously is where the name came from. Basically the sequence starts with 0 and 1, and the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers, simple right? Well start writing them out and see how high you get without using a calculator or that column addition crap we learned in 3^rd grade.  You can probably get to the 15^th or 16^th term without having to use too much brain power, don’t feel discouraged if you cannot, trust me knowing the 30^th Fibonacci number does not help you get girls, I have tried! This sequence continues on for infinitum until….. oh wait we never get to infinity, well then I guess it goes on forever, pretty cool right?? :D

 What if instead of 0 and 1, we started the Fibonacci sequence with 2 and 1???? And each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two??? Well that isn’t the Fibonacci sequence, sorry folks that’s called the Lucas sequence. This sequence was discovered by François Édouard Anatole Lucas while he was studying the patterns and significance of the Fibonacci sequence (Best job ever right :D). I’m not going to tell you to try and figure out this sequence, don’t worry, I’ve tried, still no girls. Lucky for us we don’t need girls we have Mathematics and we have NATURE!!!! Now readers, I want you to go outside and find a pinecone!!!! Just an arbitrary pinecone, hopefully one that has yet to open up fully and isn’t damaged. Now for those of you who did not get a pinecone, you are no fun. For those of you who did get a pinecone, awesome! You are now the proud owner of your very own Fibonacci thingy. Here’s where it gets interesting, count the spirals stemming from the top of the pinecone and straying diagonally. Do try not to countr the same part of the pinecone twice, it isn’t rocket science. Once you’ve counted them, count the spirals going the other way. Now take a minute to look at those numbers you got, assuming you counted correctly I can guarantee that you got a 7,5,8,11,or 13 as a number. No it’s not magic, silly readers it’s just mathematics. Pinecones are guaranteed to have a number of spirals that corresponds to a Fibonacci or a Lucas number, always. Go get three more pinecones, do the same thing, you might just find something very mathgical J.  Now go outside and find a pineapple!! For those of you who went outside looking for a pineapple, I commend you efforts but I doubt you will find one. If you didn’t go look for a pineapple, you are smart, but still no fun. If you did find a pineapple then you are very lucky. Anyone else just go look at one. Do the same thing you did with the pinecones except this time count the spirals turning upwards as well. I bet you get one of the Fibonacci or Lucas numbers. Anyone who didn’t, count it again. Those are just two of the many, many “Fibonacci thingys” in the world I’ll let you guys go find the rest. Let’s move on, who ever made up that myth about four leaf clovers being lucky? I never understood how a clover could be lucky till someone pointed it out to me. Maybe the clover is lucky to be 4 leafed? Mind explosion! What are the two most common clovers to find? I’d say 3, and 5 and 4 is the rarest? Well maybe, just maybe, it’s because 3 and 5 are Fibonacci numbers, and 4 is a Lucas number :D, because as we all know Lucas numbers are much more rare in nature than Fibonacci numbers. I wonder how many things in this world have associations with the Fibonacci and Lucas numbers? I think I read somewhere about dandelions maybe I wonder if they have spirals and something about nautiluses? Hmm well I guess I’ll just have to look that up another time ;) Maybe now when you guys see a tree or a clover or a pinecone, you won’t just see the object. Maybe you’ll see the numbers and maybe you’ll figure out why this “small world” is much larger than we think it is. Happy Mathing!

Your weekly “Coincidence”: I’m going to do this section every week, I will include a story from my week in which a “coincidence” occurred that seemed especially, mathy to me, enjoy!

This week I had to finish writing an English research paper, (yeah I know, eww English ;)   ) but being math people we must respect all of the subjects no matter how unmathy they are. For this research paper I had to research fireproofing for firefighters. So I went to the Richmond Times Dispatch archives, and I don’t remember exactly what I searched for, but I do remember that when the search came back for something about firefighting fireproofing or something like that, it returned 911 articles. Small World huh?

                                                                               

A Touch of Mathematics

     Unless you have been living under a rock for your whole life you've been introduced to Math. Unfortunately you have been introduced solely to Math. What many people do not realize is that the things you learn in school that bore everyone to death, that's right, I mean you English lovers, is just Math. What this blog is going to be about is not Math, this blog is going to be about Mathematics. Now you're probably wondering about now, why David, aren't Math and Mathematics the same thing? To this ridiculous statement I answer with a quick slap to your face. Math is pure numbers inside of equations and just solving for x and all that crap we learn in school. Mathematics is the more beautiful side to these numbers. The real life examples and the natural patterns and natural Math that is found everywhere in nature. Hopefully this blog will inspire you, my readers, to look for Mathematics in the world and if you do, i promise you will understand Math more if you do.

I would like to point out this theory that has been introduced semi-recently. It has been around for hundreds of years but now it is spreading like wildfire. It is the theory that everything and everyone in the world is connected through numbers and patterns in the universe. Now to some people this makes plenty of reasonable sense. Good for you. For the other type of person, those of my readers who find this harder to grasp or believe due to religious beliefs and such I ask you keep an open mind. You might just learn something.
Imagine for a moment that this theory is correct, an assumption if you will. Imagine that every person you have met or will meet in your life has already been pre-defined for you. You cannot change it, it will happen. The important moments in your life, those times you nearly escape death, and the times you meet special people in your life are all hard coded into the universe.
Now think about how many times in your life you have thought " wow what a coincidence!"  or "Wow, What a small world" Maybe you met an old friend at a store, or maybe one of your old teachers walks into the place you work at. How about when two things that were seemingly unrelated come together and suddenly make sense with each other. Now you could blow these off as mere coincidences, freaks of nature, but we are Mathematicians now, we don't see them as coincidences anymore. Maybe these freaks of nature were meant to happen, perhaps you were supposed to run into that old friend at the store. Maybe that friend really needed someone to cheer them up and seeing you made their day. Perhaps your old teacher has been having troubles finding a new job and you remember there is an opening at the place you work at. Maybe those two things were connected to each since they were first thought up. Maybe, just maybe they were always meant to touch. Maybe the next time you think it's just a coincidence or a small world you will instead think of it as your destiny. You might find you value the interactions a little more when they were meant to be.
There is a new show that premiered in March this year. This show is called Touch. This show is one of the most amazing and interesting show I believe I have ever watched in my life. This show is all about this theory and it shows it in every episode. The main character's child, Jake, in at least 12 years old, and in those twelve years he has not said a single word. It is Jake's job to make sure the people in the world who are destined to meet get their. It is his job to make sure their lives Touch. In the first episode Jake begins obsessing over the number 318, and throughout the episode people from all over the world encounter the number 318 in their lives. People are brought together, people meet for the first , but not their last time, and peoples lives are saved, all because of one interaction. I won't go into too much detail but i recommend you watch the first episode online and i can almost guarantee you will be intrigued by this show and be roped in by it. You can watch the episodes here. http://www.fox.com/touch/

Through the next few weeks and on I will delve deeper into this idea that things in the world are connected to each other. Not only that I  will shine some light to you non-believers on the beauty the world holds. The beauty much deeper than just visual  and sensual aesthetics. The beauty that mathematics brings to the world and maybe I'll get you to see the world through my eyes.
We will learn together through this blog that the world isn't actually as large as we think it is. We will learn that we can simplify everything in the world into simple numbers that connect everyone.

                                         It looks like it's just a Larger Small World.