Monday 29 September 2014

Exciting Space News - Women of India (and some men)

Check out this article about "Nandini Harinath, 44, a physicist and a mother of two, was the deputy operations director of the Mars mission - in other words, she was the person "operating" the spacecraft between Earth and Mars."

Article Here

Image and text from the BBC
original link from Amy Poehler's Smart Girls on Facebook. 
Indian staff from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) celebrate after the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft (MoM) successfully entered the Mars orbit

Tuesday 2 September 2014

Does 1 = 0.9999...?

Ask yourself the question first. What do YOU think about the question and why?

How about the other ninths?

Once you have puzzled over this question, please enjoy the following two videos from Numberphile and Vi Hart, two legends.

Puzzling needs to take at least five minutes.

Also, DP students, the previous post is very new with you in mind. All others are very welcome.

Vi Hart

Numberphile

teeny and HUGE Numbers

In Diploma Mathematical Studies we are starting the course looking at the story of Number and how we communicate all sorts of things with different types of Numbers.

You are all probably familiar with Natural Numbers and Integers but there are also Rational, Real and Imaginary numbers. When society needs more from mathematics to push through and develop in some way we develop new systems to make that possible.

Number types tell the story of society and its complexity.

Check out these sites:
FSU (where my dad did his doctorate) and their famous Powers of ten
and this famous video - it's old but the numbers are relevant



We have had these types of numbers in this blog before. Please visit or revisit for your mathematical enjoyment about the scale of the universe(s).

CLICK right here