About the Shannon number, chess and nostalgia

In 2020, chess became a trend thanks to the series ‘Queen's Gambit’ that tells the story of Beth Harmon, an orphan girl who learns how to play chess with the janitor and becomes a prodigy player.

The story is a fiction based on the novel written by Walter Tevis; but the plot takes up the true atmosphere that existed around chess during the decades from 1960 to 1990.

In those years, people were avidly following chess games in newspapers, magazines and on television. The championships were quite an event, especially the duels between the Soviet and the American grandmasters. However, that era ended on May 11, 1997 when Deep Blue, an IBM computer, beat the world champion Garry Kasparov.

We currently live in another kind of world in which computers and artificial intelligence have become part of our lives and it is in this world, precisely, in which the number of chess movements known as ‘Shannon number’ takes relevance.

Science food: Sugar polyhedra

3D printing was proposed around 1981 when the first patent for a printer of this type was registered in Japan, but it was not until 1984 when the American inventor Charles Hull made the concept of three-dimensional printing a reality.

3D printing, however, did not become popular until the 21st century. Today, a 3D printer can print impressive models using plastic filaments deposited by layers.

However, can a 3D-printer print food?

Science: when serious names are not enough in mathematics

Listening about math can cause grief and pain. This is a feeling for all the students around the world about mathematics. There is a nursery song that says: mathematics is the science that takes your patience off.

So, is it possible to talk about having fun with names about maths?

Well, yes, let us see some cases.

There are some graphs for mathematical functions with funny names. For example, have you heard about the "popcorn function"?

Weird numbers: Geometric numbers

In the primary school, we learn the first numbers. We learn how to count from 1 to 10 with our fingers, and perhaps up to 20 if we use our toes.

A child can count, surely, as he decides, not necessarily in order. Children have fun with numbers at first time but in some cases, teaching methods and certain teachers may cause that at some point, children who have fun with numbers in the beginning, suddenly start to hate them ... and later they also hate everything related to mathematics.

There are one day to celebrate the Children's Day in every country. In Mexico, this day is celebrated on April 30. Well, for those days, I share some "geometric numbers" so that you can have fun again... like children.

Metric scales: coronavirus and covermask

Since March 2020, the world has faced a situation unbelieveable for these times of technological advances.

The situation is a pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus or type 2 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. In the news, it is referred as Covid-19 that means coronavirus of 2019. Yes, the virus appeared in the city of Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 and spreaded around the world since the spring of 2020.

The use of covermasks has been popularized as a shield to minimize the risk of infection by this virus.

But, why not all of the covermasks are effective and what is the reason of the effectiveness for the god ones? Well, we can use the metric scales of the Decimal System of Units for explaining this situation.

New Year's resolutions ... in algebraic language!

A few days after the start of the New Year, many people have in mind the New Year's resolutions. The number of people who intend to change their life is unknown and so is the number of purposes they want to fulfill. However, in these cases, the “constant” known is the type of purposes that most people want to follow.

The most common resolutions are the following as well as how to fulfill them with the help of algebraic language:

Fashion and the statistical mode

What is the fashion for this season?

Do you know that this is related with the statistical mode?

Year after year there are famous catwalks about the new proposals for the clothing fashion world. Paris, Rome and New York are the leaders of the fashion trends in the world. So if you like to be a fashion follower you must follow the trends of those cities for each season of each year. But you know that fashion is a business and has to follow real trends. What are the things that the majority of the people in this world follow to dress? Well, that is the field of the statistical mode.

Science: when serious names are not enough in Mathematics

Hearing about mathematics could be a sign of grief and sorrow. Generally around the world, mathematics has been a tortuous topic because since the early grades. In Spanish, there is a song that says: mathematics is the science which breaks your patience…

So how could be funny talk about names in mathematics?

Well, let me tell you about that. There are some mathematical functions with plots that resemble to funny or weird things and had been named in honor of those things.

For example, have you heard about the popcorn function?

Weird scientific celebrations

Some time ago when I revised my niece’s homework I explained her how to obtain the perimeters and areas of some plane geometric figures. There was no problem in the calculations of the square, rectangle and triangle areas. But the problem was the calculation of the circle’s area because of the number pi. How to explain pi to her? In those days, she hasn’t seen even the decimal numbers and notation (those things about the decimal point and the cyphers on the right). It was really difficult to make her understand those numbers and to explain her pi and the perimeter and area formulas. However some scientific celebrations helped me and I would like to tell you about them.

Famous people that studied science VI

Yes, more famous people related to science world!

Rowan Atkinson studied electric engineering in the Newcastle University in England and later he earned a Master degree at the Queen College. Yes, you know, the engineer Atkinson is the famous Mr. Bean!

Powers of 10

I always thought to write this post when the visits of my blog in Spanish arise to 100,000. Today I opened it and had 101,365 visits in the Spanish versión and 18,396 in the English version, a total of more than 10⁵ and 10⁴ visits, each one. However the powers of 10 of this post don’t refer to the mathematical numbers but the people who have passed till here.

Mad about polyhedra III

In this virtual or real world, there are so many people and so many stories.

A certain day, the artist Dan Sternof decided to discover a wood dodecahedron inside a tree trunk in front of his house. When the winter had come, he decided to leave snow dodecahedra to improve the city landscape!

Mad about polyhedra II

In the childhood we learn about some simple 3D geometric figures like de pyramids and prisms. Even most of us build our own polyhedron shapes for homework in the primary school. However with the time, most of the people forget the existence of polyhedra. But it happens that one day in certain moment due to a strange cause you will find again a polyhedron and you will not let it go.

This situation happened to the chemist engineer Henry Chasey who decided to build its own fantastic polyhedra after seeing the Kepler’s platonic model in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos tv program. Therefore, since the 1980’s, Chasey built a huge collection of melted acrylic polyhedra.

 

Mad about polyhedra I

There are people in this world who do not know polyhedra yet.

But, on the other hand, there are people who someday know polyhedral and after this moment they will never let them go…

Counting numbers

I was a child when I had the question: till what number we can count?

Today I know that there is an infinite set of numbers but my question still remains with a little change: how many of the numbers have a name?

Astronomical games III. The Sun and planetary skies

In two last entries, everything about solar system scales, sizes of the sun and the planets, distances from the planets to the sun and characteristics about their composition and their skies. However, how big is the sun in every planetary sky?

Famous people that studied sciences and mathematics III

More people that studied something related with mathematics and sciences.

Florence Nightingale, nurse and first medical statistician.

Witches

Do you think in the existence of the witches?

Well, believe me, they exist! 

Changing the geometry of the world

Only some human beings have changed the geometry of their known world.

On October 12, the World remembers Columbus’ discovering of American continent. I am referring not to the country but to the complete continent named America some years later its discovery (the American continent from Argentina in the South to Canada in the North).

The Little Prince and the Infinite

Recently I met with the Little Prince of Saint-Exupéry. 

He is just as described by the writer, his disordered hair seems as made of wheat fields and his smile is charming.

But the writer was a little scarce in the description of his character.

You can not tolerate him!

He is insistent until death... maybe as several children that I know. 

Once he asks one question, he expects the best answer. 

 

This was my situation the day when I saw him.

I was in a 2 hours cue to ascend to the Eiffel Tower plus 2 hours cue to wait for the elevator to go to the half of the tower. I did not want to continue and preferred to see Paris during an hour among hundreds of crazy people, cameras and flashes. Then, I waited other 2 hours cue to the elevator that took me down… I felt that I was waited an infinite time until then.