Symmetry Eames Animated Short

What is symmetry in math? And how do you test for degrees of symmetry? Learn about “the mathematical ordering of form and the symmetrical properties of objects” with Symmetry by Charles and Ray Eames. Animation by Glen Fleck, with music composed and performed by Elmer Bernstein.

Symmetry was one of five shorts featured in a 1961 collection of educational films created for an interactive exhibition called Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond at Los Angeles’ California Museum of Science and Industry, now called the California Science Center.

A quick introduction of symmetry from Wikipedia:

Symmetry (from Greek συμμετρία symmetria “agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement”) in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, “symmetry” has a more precise definition, and is usually used to refer to an object that is invariant under some transformations; including translation, reflection, rotation or scaling. Although these two meanings of “symmetry” can sometimes be told apart, they are intricately related…

2(n) - The Power of Exponential Numbers Eames Animation

In 1961, an interactive exhibition called Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond inaugurated the new science wing at Los Angeles’ California Museum of Science and Industry. Sponsored by IBM, it was an innovative exhibit designed by husband and wife team Charles and Ray Eames, and lucky for us, it included five short animations that explored a handful of math concepts.

This favorite is an old tale set in a palace in India. What happens when you double the grains of wheat on each square of a chessboard? Watch 2ⁿ – “a story about the exponential growth of numbers raised to powers.”

Relate reading: Mathematica at EamesOffice.com.

Powers of Ten Eames Videos

Elliot pointed me towards Eames and the studio's contributions.  This video is an interesting example of early computing.

Powers of Ten, written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames, was first released in 1968 and later re-released by the Eames Office in 1977. It was based on the 1957 book Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps by Kees Boeke. A summary of the film:

Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. Returning to Earth with breathtaking speed, we move inward- into the hand of the sleeping picnicker – with ten times more magnification every ten seconds. Our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.

Powers of Ten is culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant, as noted by the Library of Congress, thanks to its simplicity, design, and the perception-altering nature of viewing it.


Here is another Eames Office video from Scale is the New Geography:

Art Museum for Gerbils - Pandoro & Tiramisù Gerbils

London-based couple Filippo and Marianna's self-isolation project calls to mind artist (and museum curator) Bill Scanga's At the Met, exhibited nearly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Childhood and Contemporary Art at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now known as MoMA PS1).

Scanga's installation involved hanging mini-replicas of works from the Metropolitan Museum's American collection on extremely long wires that traveled from under-ceiling picture rail to the baseboard, where a collection of art-loving taxidermied mice waited expectantly. One rested on a familiar-looking, black vinyl upholstered bench, a tiny blue shopping bag from the Met’s gift store parked near its dainty, shoeless feet.

The Story of Physics - Dara O'Briain

Balls, pendulums, apples and magnets all played their part in the story of modern physics, but then things got weird. And when Albert Einstein combined time and space, things got even weirder – step forward quantum uncertainty, black holes and the Big Bang.

This short animation, The Story of Physics, is one in a series of simplified historical summaries from the BBC2’s Science Club series hosted by Dara O Briain. Learn how 300 years of physics was mostly about observing and measuring, until x-rays, radioactivity, and other new discoveries stopped fitting neatly into initial observations.

And then “a Swiss patent clerk started a full-on storm.” That, of course, was 26-year-old Albert Einstein, who, along with other scientists, changed the story of physics and pushed our understanding of how the universe works.

Animated Science: Periodic Table - Luis Perez

Celebrate the periodic table’s 150th anniversary with this episode of Animated Science, a series produced by the Universitat de Barcelona and animator Luis Pérez.

Follow the main character as he struggles to understand the periodic table, the elements, and chemistry for the first time. After a rough start, he listens to the teacher and, with some contemplation, begins to understand how everything is made from atoms and their different combinations.

In this case, he considers the water molecule, “composed of two hydrogen atoms, each linked by a single chemical bond to an oxygen atom.” This leads to how he thinks about elephants, plants, and everything around him.

The animation comes with Spanish and Catalan labels, too.

Tooth Fairy Economics - Planet Money

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister of New Zealand declared the Tooth Fairy an essential worker. But how much is the tooth fairy paying these days? And what does that mean for the economy?

Quark in Quarantine

Been watching a lot of Deep Space Nine lately, and wanted to share this cute picture from reddit user Kirby1701-D.

Manual Pushback of 747-400

Esta tarde salen varios espoñoles del Aeropuerto Ramón Villeda Morales de SPS, luego que España activara el Mecanismo Europeo de Protección Civil para hacer una operación en Centroamérica que permitiría dar salida a unos 400 turistas de ese pais que se encuentran en la región. pic.twitter.com/zLm3e5Jg9Z

— Hondudiario.com (@hondudiario) March 27, 2020

While overall demand for air travel is low at the moment, we are seeing a number of rescue and repatriation flights to pick up stranded travelers, as well as a bunch of extra cargo flights to get supplies around.

Wamos Air is a Spanish charter airline that has a fleet of over a dozen planes, including four 747-400s. They often operate these on behalf of other airlines. One of those planes has been in Central America the past few days.

The 747-400 in question has the registration code EC-KXN, and is 26 years old. The plane flew:

• From Madrid to Guatemala City (10hr20min) on Thursday
• From Guatemala City to San Salvador (26min) on Friday
• From San Salvador to San Pedro Sula (35min) on Friday
• From San Pedro Sula to Madrid (9hr19min) on Friday

 

While I have no inside knowledge here, my assumption would be that they didn’t have a pushback tug that worked for the situation. I’m not sure if that’s because the airport just doesn’t have one for a 747, if they didn’t have the part needed to connect the plane to the tug, or what.

The airport does see regular Boeing 787 service from Madrid on Air Europa, so it’s not like the airport doesn’t get big planes. However, a fully loaded 747-400 has nearly double the weight of a fully loaded 787-8, and can weigh over 900,000 pounds.

Kinda cool, eh?

Orangutans Playing with Otters - CNN & Pairi Daiza Zoo

From CNN:

Otterly adorable: 24-year-old Ujian seems smitten with his little friends.

A zoo in Belgium has shared some amazing photos of a blossoming friendship between a family of orangutans and their otter neighbors.

The animals live together at Pairi Daiza zoo in Domaine du Cambron, as part of a program designed to maintain the primates' wellbeing in captivity.

Here, otter, otter!

According to zoo spokesman Mathieu Goedefroy, they "must be entertained, occupied, challenged and kept busy mentally, emotionally and physically at all times."

As part of the program, the family of Asian small-clawed otters were allowed to live in the river that runs through the enclosure that houses the orangutan family: 24-year-old father Ujian, 15-year-old mother Sari and Berani, their three-year-old son.

"The otters really enjoy getting out of the water on the orangutan island to go and play with their big, furry friends," said Goedefroy, adding that Berani and Ujian have developed a particularly strong bond with their neighbors.

You're never alone with an otter.

"It makes life more fun and interesting for both animal species, which makes it a very successful experiment," he said.

The orangutan family arrived at the zoo in 2017. Another two orangutans also live there: Gempa, a male, and Sinta, a female.

Peekaboo! Three-year-old Berani has formed a strong bond with the otters.

Orangutans share 97% of their DNA with humans and as a result require a lot of attention to keep them occupied, Goedefroy said.

"Our keepers entertain them all day long with mind games, riddles, puzzles, and other stuff to train their intelligence," he added.

Orangutan populations are threatened by palm oil plantations in their native Borneo and Sumatra. Goedefroy told CNN that the zoo has raised funds to plant 11,000 trees to restore a forest in Borneo.