science party tricks video

Check out this neat science party tricks video. I tried the cloth one, but failed :-\
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In this TEDTalks video, Dan Meyer talks about how today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect and master paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. He then talks about classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.

It's a good watch for any educator in mathematics.

ted talks math

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWUFjb8w9Ps
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Mandelbrot Set Music Video


Here is an old music video for Johnathan Coultan's song Mandelbrot Set (this is by Pisut Wisessing that was made in Film class at the Cornell Summer Animation Workshop). Enjoy!
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ted wolfram alpha theory of everything


"TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes... TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts."

In the video above... "Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, talks about his quest to make all knowledge computational -- able to be searched, processed and manipulated. His new search engine, Wolfram Alpha, has no lesser goal than to model and explain the physics underlying the universe.
"
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P vs NP

Apr 22, 2010  
p vs np

Check out this youtube video about the epic battle between P and NP.
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Nature by Numbers (video)

Mar 26, 2010  
nature.jpg A movie inspired on numbers, geometry and nature, by Cristóbal Vila.

Youtube Link.
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How to: Calculator Hack

Jan 16, 2010  
This youtube video instructs you how to "hack" your calculator. It's pretty neat but could get annoying ;-)

hack your calculator
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There are a few ways you can organize the digital papers you download.

1. One such way is using Zotero. Basically, Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.

zotero.jpg
2. Another one is to use Mendeley. In addition to being multi-platform, it also has a web site where you can sync your PDFs for online access. It also extracts the metadata from your PDFs (like title, authors, journal titles) and fills in many fields for you. You also have PDF renaming options.

3. Finally, a lot of people use papers: http://mekentosj.com/papers/

I haven't tried any of these though, so I wouldn't know which one to recommend. I personally just organize the PDF's by fields of research and name each one as the title of the paper. It helps having hard copies as well :D
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Wolfram|Alpha homework day is TODAY! Go check it out at their site. Throughout Homework Day, Stephen Wolfram and rest of the team will answer tough questions and highlight some of the creative submissions from students (and teachers). You can send them questions throughout the day (and could be eligible for prizes). It lasts from noon - 2am.

homework-day.jpg

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This cool youtube video shows how to turn a sphere inside out without making a hole, tearing it, or creasing it!

3d picture of sphere
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Take a look at this video of Scott Flansburg on the Discovery Channel's "More Than Human":

Scott Flansburg takes cubed roots fast

In the video you see Scott Flansburg take the cubed root of 658,503 to get an answer of 87 in a matter of a second. How does he do it you ask?
This trick does require some memorization though, and also requires the number given to be a perfect cube. You need to memorize the cubes of the numbers 0 through 9 (or be able to figure them out on the spot). This information is contained below:

cubed2.jpg

Note that the last digits of the cubes on the right have all the numbers 1 to 9, but no number is repeated. Here is how to find the two-digit cube root of a perfect cube.

Take a number, such as 658,503 which is grouped into two parts.

1. Looking at the number we see it ends in a 3, and according to the table only 7^3 ends in a 3, thus the last digit of our number is 7.

2. Next, ignore the last 3 digits of the cube, so consider 658. Compare these digits with the table above. Note that 658 fits between 512 and 729. You always choose the smaller one, in this case 512 which happens to correspond to 8^3.

Thus, the last digit is 7 and the first digit is 8, giving an answer of 87.

Normally this trick is used for six digit perfect cubes. To help understand how this works, ask yourself - What is the last digit of (10x+y)^3? Clearly it is y^3 mod 10 (how does this relate to #1?).

Another Example:
In 474,552 we have that 343 is the immediate smallest number from 474 so the first digit is 7.
The last digit in 474,552 is 2 and only 8^3 ends in a 2, so the last digit is 8. Hence, 78^3=474,552.
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Adam Micolich has posted a video to show how using the "packing fraction" one can come up with a very accurate guess to the number of M&Ms in a jar.

How to Guess the Number of MMs in a Jar
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rubiks cube picture

Dan Brown takes us inside on how to solve the Rubik's Cube:
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  • Scott Flansburg was born in New York on December 28, 1963.
  • He served in the U.S. Air Force (1982-1988) and had a tour of duty with the Office of Special Investigations in Tokyo, Japan. He then returned to the United States and became an advocate of teaching math in an innovative fashion. 
  • In 1989 he drew the attention of Regis Philbin. Mr. Philbin is the individual that is credited for naming Scott, The Human Calculator during his appearance on The Regis and Kathy Lee Show. 
  • In 1991 he began working on a project called Turn On the Human Calculator In You, a series of tapes that was subsequently on Mike Levy's Amazing Discoveries.
  • Turn On the Human Calculator In You was one of the most successful early infomercials touted as having in excess of 125 million viewings.
  • The follow-up product was called Mega Math with Kevin Tredeau (1996) which added a video and workbook and was later published by Tru Vantage International.
  • He has subsequently appeared on countless television shows including Oprah, Ellen, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, Discovery Channel's `More Than Human', and thousands of local radio and TV shows.
You can take a look at the infomercial here:
amazing discoveries calculator picture
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The following is a tutorial about how to make the Yoshimoto cube using paper (though it takes a very long time!). To make it you'll need paper, scisors, some glue and some adhesive tape.

How to Make a Yoshimoto Cube origami

You can check out a non-paper version here.

To make one yourself you can print out the following Yoshimoto sheet and try to assemble it yourself :-)
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