Sunday, December 27, 2009

Eternal Recurrence

Design Science Tableau
design science tableau
(click for Photostream view)


I'm back at Duke's hanging out with assorted characters. What impresses me most is it's 52 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabouts, feels colder, even though I'm wearing layers.

Lindsey, with fewer layers and a cold, is toughing her way through a partial set.

I'm the old guy in this picture, reading works by younger men: an articulate 15 year old on the Math Forum (my daughters age); a poorly formatted yet thoughtful essay by Aaron Tabor, on the similarities between Nietzsche and Blake.

I brought some props, took some pictures, polished recent blog posts, adding links.

Chris and I talk about high desert Oregon, where he's traveled some, including by hopping a freight. Shades of Wendy and Lucy. He likes Applegate, Oregon.

Back at the ranch or whatever, cell call from Koski. He's steeped in molecular biology these days, wanted to yak about the Williams versus Fuller meanings for A and B particles. The Williams B contains an A, if you wanna look at it that way. The B, A and T of equal volume (1/24) is pretty clean. That being said, the Williams way makes plenty of sense (Koski's point), has its grounding in history.

I went on to tell about Gregor's contribution, in connection with my so far only one sample lesson plan for Martian Math (marketing's idea). Students use Python or other language (Logo?) to have a turtle draw the plane nets. Gregor's for the T was elegant and to the point.

MPG wrote awhile back asking about using this stuff in Detroit. I pointed to that sentence about metal stamping. Cars are like metal origami. We're using plane nets for A, B and T modules as stand ins, excuses to focus on, this kind of machine work:
Materials: No matter what your local construction material, perhaps paper, perhaps imaginary and/or computer generated, consider metal stamping and folding a possible topic. How are car bodies made? Watch some YouTubes or listen to machinists describe their metal work.

Does your school have its own metal working shop or perhaps sources of clay? Paper is not the only option. You may wish to recycle already manufactured parts in some lessons, not construct from raw materials.
Although it's late, I'm on kitchen duty where the beans are concerned. I already had a plan for some talking head tapes (sorrows of empire type stuff). However, POV-Ray is calling. I need to render what Koski sent me, get into the VRMLs. vZome (virtual Zome) outputs in both formats and I've been touting it as a school-friendly. Some of the outputs are still on the pathological side though.

Some kindly Mormons came by today, lent me their book with a specific passage to read. I okayed the mission, will follow up next week.