Saul Schleimer and Henry Segerman show off some of their beautiful 3D printed mathematical structures.
The Jerusalem Chords Bridge, Israel, was built to make way for the city's light rail train system. Its design took into consideration more than just utility — it is a work of art, designed as a monument. Its beauty rests not only in the visual appearance of its criss-cross cables, but also in the mathematics that lies behind it. So let's take a deeper look at it.
Keats complained that a mathematical explanation of rainbows robs them of their magic, conquering "all mysteries by rule and line". But rainbow geometry is just as elegant as the rainbows themselves.
What do butterflies, ketchup, microcellular structures, and plastics have in common? It's a curious minimal surface called the gyroid.
For years, scientists and science fiction writers have contemplated the possibilities of higher dimensional spaces. What would a 4- or 5-dimensional universe look like?
When your eyes see a picture they send an image to your brain, which your brain then has to make sense of. But sometimes your brain gets it wrong. The result is an optical illusion. Similarly in logic, statements or figures can lead to contradictory conclusions, which we call paradoxes. This article looks at examples of geometric optical illusions and paradoxes and gives explanations of what's really going on.
