Math

Math

Climbing a Watery Slope

A water-walking insect can propel itself up steep, slippery slopes without moving its legs.

Math

Pushing the Limit

Scientists are moving closer to constructing superefficient, noisefree data-transmission codes.

Math

Ask-a-Friend Marketplaces

If you ask enough friends, paying for answers to questions can help you get the answers you need from a social network.

Math

Sliding Around

Seemingly simple sliding-coin puzzles can be surpassingly tough.

Math

Chaotic Moon

Saturn's craggy moon Hyperion tumbles erratically as it orbits the planet.

Math

Binary Dice

A set of specially marked, black-and-white dice suggests novel puzzles and games.

Math

Numbers of No Escape

Playful iterative processes can get you stuck in mathemagical black holes.

Math

Tying Down a Random Walk

Knotting a necktie poses mechanical and mathematical challenges.

Math

Math Music

Curious about the sounds of pi, the music of Fibonacci numbers, the blare of chaos, or the chimes of a DNA sequence? This interactive Web site, developed by Jonathan Middleton and his team at Eastern Washington University, provides a variety of tools for composing music based on mathematical recipes that convert sequences of numbers into […]

Math

A Mathemusical Potpourri

Turning numbers and mathematical ideas into musical tones comes in many flavors.

Math

Celestial Atomic Physics

Insights from atomic physics lead to new routes for spacecraft.

Math

Fermat’s Natural Spirals

Using points to trace out spirals produces intriguing secondary patterns.