Tag Archives: Brady Haran

Math puzzles and sunflowers at the Manchester Science Festival

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The Manchester Science Festival (UK) has organized a citizen science project in honour of the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s (Wikipedia essay) birth (from the essay [Note: I have removed links and bibiographic references]),

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (… TEWR–ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He was stockily built, had a high-pitched voice, and was talkative, witty, and somewhat donnish. He showed many of the characteristics that are indicative of Asperger syndrome.

Here’s more about the project, thanks to the GrrlScientist April 16, 2012 posting on the Guardian Science blogs,

What do sunflowers and Alan Turing share in common? Basically, Turing noticed that the number of spirals in the seed patterns of sunflower heads often conform to a number that appears in the mathematical sequence called the Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89…). Other plants also show this pattern. When Turing came to the University of Manchester, he began exploring how this phenomenon might help us to understand the growth of plants, a field now known as phyllotaxis.

Tragically, Turing died before his work was complete, so the Manchester Science Festival is asking for you to help mathematicians explore Turing’s ideas about plant growth.

This video on the GrrlScientist posting (there are other related videos in the posting) by Brady Haran, the video journalist who amongst other projects films the Numberphile series, explains Turing’s interest in sunflowers and Fibonacci’s spiral,

You don’t have to be a mathematician to join in although it seems that it’s best if you’re in Manchester (the festival doesn’t specify residence there as a requirement), from the Turing’s Sunflowers webpage on the Manchester Science Festival website,

This spring, we need your green fingers! Join Manchester Science Festival and MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) for a mass planting of sunflowers as part of an experiment to solve the mathematical riddle that Turing worked on before his death in 1954.

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Brighten up Manchester and the Nation, whilst helping mathematicians to explore Turing’s theories about plant growth. We need you to sow sunflower seeds in April and May, nurture the plants throughout the summer and when the sunflowers are fully grown we’ll be counting the number of spirals in the seed patterns in the sunflower heads. Don’t worry – expertise will be on hand to help count the seeds and you’ll be able to post your ‘spiral counts’ online.

The results will be announced during the Manchester Science Festival 2012 (27 Oct – 4 Nov), alongside a host of cultural events connected to Turing’s life and legacy, at MOSI, Manchester Museum and other cultural spaces.

You can find out more about the Manchester Science Festival, which runs from Oct. 27 – Nov. 4, 2012, here.

Although they don’t identify it on the Turing’s Sunflowers webpage,I’m pretty sure this is a bronze of Turing seated on a bench. Someone has thoughtfully given him a bouquet of sunflowers,

Bronze of Alan Turing in Manchester. (downloaded from http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/connect/getinvolved/sunflowers)

Have fun!

Touching Mendeleev’s business card

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The folks at the Periodic Table of Videos (University of Nottingham) strike again. Videographer, Brady Haran, writes about his latest project for the group in a Dec. 7, 2011 posting on the Guardian science blogs,

Dmitri Mendeleev has an almost god-like status in the pantheon of science. Many people probably picture the creator of the earliest version of the periodic table as a bearded genius hunched over papers and textbooks.

In his native Russia, the legend is if anything even greater. There the periodic table is widely known as “The Table of Mendeleev” and his image has been immortalised in everything from stamps to statues.

Mendeleev is unquestionably on the scientific A-list, despite being famously snubbed by the Nobel prize committee in the early 1900s. But like all great figures from history, we occasionally get to see past the legend. We hear a story or glimpse an object that betrays a comforting level of normality.

The object of normality is a business card. Here’s a video Haran and Prof. Martyn Poliakoff made about the card and Mendeleev,

I love the way the envelope containing the business cards (one offering an introduction to another scientist and one being included as a business card) was addressed to London, Professor Thorpe, Fellow of the Royal Society. No street address, no country, nothing—just a city, a name, and an association. (I did find it surprising that Poliakoff was allowed to touch the materials with his bare hands rather than using protective gloves.) Here’s an image of the envelope,

Envelope addressed by Mendeleev to 'Monsieur le Professeur Thorpe' at the Royal Society. Photograph: The Periodic Table of Videos

Haran’s posting features images of the business card and Mendeleev and another video, this one about Ernest Rutherford’s childhood potato masher.

YouTube unleashes five science channels

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Friday, November 11, 2011 (Remembrance Day), YouTube unleashed 100 new TV channels. From Rob Waugh’s Oct. 31, 2011 article for the Daily Mail,

YouTube is to take a dramatic step away from its roots as a user-generated video site – launching 100 new professionally produced TV channels in partnership with stars such as Madonna and Ashton Kutcher.

The channels will roll out from this autumn, and will be free of charge, supported by Google’s advertising system.

The move is designed to turn YouTube – already available via many internet TVS – into a rival to cable and satellite TV channels.

In addition to the celebrity-driven channels, YouTube is also launching a number of science channels. From the James Grime Nov. 11, 2011 posting on the Guardian science blogs,

Google is investing in education and science, with five new YouTube channels dedicated to mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics – and spectacular demonstrations.

The five channels will be hosted by Brady Haran, Numberphile (mathematics and mathematicians) and Deep Sky (astronomy); Hank and John Green (brothers and vloggers) each with one science channel  (Grime was not able to offer details); and Steve Spangler, well-known for his coke and mentos experiment, and the director of National Hands-on Science Institute in the US .

I’m glad to see the interest in science and a little sorry to observe the lack of female-hosted science channels. For the record, I think the lack of female involvement is due to the fact that very few women have created science-oriented video channels and I believe it’s time to change that.

Beyond eating Easter creme eggs, University of Nottingham chemists show the way

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The University of Nottingham’s Chemistry Department has produced a video titled, Chemistry of Creme Eggs. It’s part of a series, Periodic Table of Videos, that they’ve produced. From the Home page,

Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century – but this modern version has a short video about each one.

We’ve done all 118 – but our job’s not finished. Now we’re updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.

Plus we’re making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab.

We’ve also started a new series – The Molecular Videos – featuring our favourite molecules and compounds.

All these videos are created by video journalist Brady Haran, featuring real working chemists from the University of Notttingham.

I gather the video about the creme eggs is one of their forays into areas of chemistry that lie beyond the periodic table of elements. Here’s the video (Note: Keep an eye out for a scientist with a head of hair that make’s Einstein’s look restrained.),

Happy Easter!

(Thanks to Grrl Scientist’s April 20, 2011 blog posting where I first saw the creme egg experiments. There is another video, featuring physics experiments and crreme eggs, in her posting.)

Reading scientific symbols, making needles obsolete, and stem cell research at UBC

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If you’ve ever struggled to read something that has scientific notations or realized that you don’t know what e=mc2 stands for, then, there’s a website that might be of interest to you.  It’s called Sixty Symbols and  it’s where scientists at the University of Nottingham (UK) are working with a filmmaker, Brady Haran to provide information. Together they are producing videos which explain the mysteries of formulas and symbols to lay people. Here’s an article about the site and here’s the site. At last, there’s something where I can check things out when I run across something unfamiliar or when I’ve started to question if I really do understand the symbol.

Scientists in Australia are developing a ‘nanopatch’ which would replace the use of needles for vaccinations. It sounds like they’re not exactly ‘ready for prime time’ but it does look promising according to this article in Nanowerk News. One of the great things about it besides being painfree is that the ‘nanopatch’ doesn’t require refrigeration or syringes so it’s much easier to get the vaccine to remote locations.

Now onto the University of British Columbia scientists who have discovered a molecule helpful with blood stem cell transplants. The molecule is part of a signaling system which can encourage the adoption of stem cells and, consequently, greater production of T-cells. For more details, go here.