Hyperbolic planes at the Science museum

looksee

Probably lots of people know about the Science Gallery http://www.sciencegallery.com but did you realise how much stuff is going on there.

One exhibition that is coming up is the 'hyperbolic crochet coral reef'. Don't let the word crochet in that name put you off. (I carefully did not put it in the title of the thread ) You might not want to go to the exhibition, but it is fascinating to read other stuff on the web about the maths involved.

At the Institute for Figuring http://www.theiff.org/main.html in LA, a mathematician realised that crochet was the only practical way to produce a model of a hyperbolic plane, and from there the whole thing went global. Have a look at the models produced and the wooly coral reef that is taking over science museums all over the world.

FoxInATreehouse

Well nature just got a little more interesting. I had to read a bit to understand what hyperbolic structures were, but it was fairly easy to grasp, especially after seeing the crocheted examples. It makes sense though since mathematics are often found in nature (Fibonacci Sequence, Golden Ratio).

I branched off a bit from the site to look more at math and nature and thought this was interesting to see. It shows how the Nautical Spiral Shell is actually made up of the Fibonacci Sequence.

I liked the part about how the universe itself may be hyperbolic rather than Euclidean (flat), and thus finite rather than infinite. Which in thinking about it, us...the Earth, are fairly small in terms of the universe. So to the extent that we can see from our position, the universe may indeed seem flat and as if it goes on forever. Yet, we can't see the possible edge of the universe so it could be ruffled or like a donut as the site suggests.

silverharp

looksee wrote: »

Probably lots of people know about the Science Gallery http://www.sciencegallery.com but did you realise how much stuff is going on there.

One exhibition that is coming up is the 'hyperbolic crochet coral reef'. Don't let the word crochet in that name put you off. (I carefully did not put it in the title of the thread ) You might not want to go to the exhibition, but it is fascinating to read other stuff on the web about the maths involved.

At the Institute for Figuring http://www.theiff.org/main.html in LA, a mathematician realised that crochet was the only practical way to produce a model of a hyperbolic plane, and from there the whole thing went global. Have a look at the models produced and the wooly coral reef that is taking over science museums all over the world.

My wife is a contributor to the Dublin one, Its an interesting story and the fact that it took a long time for the math to catch up with the observation.