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Math is cool

I've spent the past few days completely immersed in essays on hyperbolic space, fractals and computational origami and OHMYGOSH have I been loving it. I discovered the Institue for Figuring and feel like something completely incomprehensible has been revealed to me: math is beautiful. I am BLOWN AWAY. This is the kind of thing that makes me think Earth was written with some kind of incredible code that only God knows. Occasionally we can catch phrases here and there, but we'll never be able to decipher the whole language.

The Institute for Figuring is:

an organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts.

The Institute’s interests are twofold: the manifestation of figures in the world around us and the figurative technologies that humans have developed through the ages. From the physics of snowflakes and the hyperbolic geometry of sea slugs, to the mathematics of paper folding, the tiling patterns of Islamic mosaics and graphical models of the human mind, the Institute takes as its purview a complex ecology of figuring.

Here are a few photos from the completely amazing Hyperbolic Coral Reef, which is, in my opinion, the most impressive interdisciplinary project I've ever seen. Is it scientific illustration? Is it art or craft? Is it mathematical exercise? Political commentary?

 hyperboliccoralreef.jpg

CHECK THIS OUT: All these creations were made through the needlecraft of crochet, which was discovered to be an especially condusive medium for explaining and visualizing hyperbolic space. As it turns out, lots of creatures in the natural world are physically structured according to hyperbolic algorithms, so this exhibit is anatomically quite accurate.

You're probably going, what? Because my explanation of this topic is muddled, at best, you just need to go to the online exhibitions at the Institute for Figuring and see for yourself. It's like listening to a group of people speaking a beautiful language you don't know and still being completely wrapped up in their conversation. For now, I leave you with this amazing origami, folded from single sheets of paper--no cuts.

origami.jpg 

Posted on Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 04:59PM by Registered CommenterApril | Comments3 Comments | References3 References

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Reader Comments (3)

...i think i've been getting this excited about economics lately.

Dude, we're like...getting old or something.
May 8, 2007 | Unregistered Commentershawn
though, I gotta admit...when i saw the heading, I thought:

"They're pregnant!"
May 8, 2007 | Unregistered Commentershawn
My 9th-grade Algebra teacher, when solving a problem for us on the board, would sometimes sigh and say, "Isn't that just beautiful?" He was always going on about how beautiful math is. We laughed, but I kind of know what he was getting at.
May 9, 2007 | Unregistered CommenterAngela

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