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  1. Beams of Our Lives

    What are energy beams? How do they carry information, cure disease, illuminate distant points, or create images on our television screens? Answers to these and other questions you probably never thought to ask can be found on a Web site hosted by the Center for Beam Physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Funky stick […]

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  2. Math

    A Minimal Winter’s Tale

    The organizers of the Breckenridge snow sculpture championships in Colorado must be getting used to having a mathematical element in their annual competition. A simple version of Enneper’s surface just before (above) and just after (below) it self-intersects. The award-winning snow sculpture of Enneper’s surface. For the second year in a row, a team assembled […]

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  3. Math

    Logic in the Blocks

    Sliding-block puzzles can be surprisingly difficult to solve and can even serve as theoretical models of computation.