Don't Try This At Home

Mythbusters is definitely my favourite TV show. These two guys, Adam Savage (the redhead) and Jamie Hyneman (the one with the 'stach and beret), get to do all sorts of crazy things in the name of science. The premise of the show is using scientific methods to try and validate or bust various urban legends, and 2008 is its 5th year running. Nice!

Last episode I watched, they revisited the previously busted myth that you can fool speed cameras by pure speed. Fans of the show get to send in their opinions, and by popular demand they decided to do the myth again.
This time, they got a race car with a GIGANTIC JET ENGINE strapped on the back, and with 245 miles/hour of PURE SPEED they managed to bypass the speed camera. Coolest job ever! They also do smaller scale stuff, like Mentos and coke (do NOT eat them together), but of course the coolest stuff are large scale. Like once they wanted to try the seven paper fold myth (can you fold a piece of paper in half more than seven times?). They had to rent an airplane hanger, use 17 gigantic rolls of paper, and spent the entire day folding paper, but eventually they folded the paper 11 times. Conclusion: you can fold a sheet of paper more than 7 times, it just takes technique and size.

Anyway, watch an episode if you can, there's lots more cool experiments: here's the schedule. It's on the Discovery Channel.
Yeah, if I ever get a male dog, I'm naming him Buster :)

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2 posts ago Josh talked about the golden ratio in the work of Da Vinci. That reminded me of a book I read last year (albeit for a school assignment) on the presence of math everywhere, including stuff about the golden ratio, why honeycombs are hexagonal, and a lot on how math is innately programmed into animals. The book is called The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs), and it's by Keith Devlin. That guy's written many other books on math too, so check them out if you're interested.

One book that caught my eye when I was searching for the author just now was one on the Millenium Problems, because it was in a question on Reach for the Top at this week's practice (life is full of coincidences). The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematical problems that were given by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000; six problems are still unsolved. A correct solution to each problem is rewarded with $1,000,000 (the Millennium Prize) from the institute. I don't see myself solving any of these, or even coming close, but they are quite interesting.

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I do believe this is the 50th post in Saddening Goat (without Jaysen's posts, anyway). So, YAY!

Till next time,
Cindy