Measuring the time of life (by J.M. Caballero Bonald)
On some other occasion in this Blog we have devoted attention to the passage of time (see A matter of time) and today I return to the same subject with a suggestive pill from the incomparable […]
Month: December 2019
Four chess pieces
The workings Fun & games in the working is taking a short (and well-deserved?) Christmas break; we’ll be back in the new year. To spend the holidays we thought we would talk about chess. And […]
Solution: Four chess pieces
We publish here the solution to the four chess pieces divertimento. The fun A chessboard has size \(n \times n\), with \(n >1\). What is the smallest number of pieces to place on the board to […]
Abel, or the tragedy of being a young genius
Niels Abel (1802-1829) was one of the most precocious and brilliant mathematicians in history, yet he had serious difficulties in getting recognition for the enormous quality of his work. Particularly dramatic was the episode that […]
On knots, Marithania and the lotus flower
Sometimes Mathematics is compared with Chess and it is true that they have a lot in common. But there is a very important difference. In Chess what counts most is the worst move, whereas in […]
Michell, Richter and Earthquakes
What are earthquakes? An earthquake, also called a seism, is an abrupt and non-permanent shaking of the earth’s crust. It is produced when a substantial amount of energy is released and can be caused by […]