Thanks to everyone who read my attempt to unify the greatest branch of science with the lowest branch of poetry last month. Professor Barmby issued a stern challenge (thanks also to Henry Leparskas for his stellar response!) to find something that rhymes with ‘Schrodinger’. First, let me pay tribute to the equation that made Mr Schrodinger famous…
Its physics is explicit in a manner so exquisite,
when you quiz it
seems illicit,
so re-visit, don’t dismiss it!
Now here are some more limericks!
Erwin Schrodinger,
The quantum woe bringer,
Was at a logical dysjunction,
Curiosity that,
Did away with his cat?
Or was it that pesky wave function?
Alone with a cat-box Bohr sat,
To test Schrody’s cool idea that,
“I’ve poked air holes” Neils said,
“He’ll be living OR dead…
…well…
…unless I poked holes in the cat…”
(This next one is my uncle Eric’s, I get no credit!)
A horseshoe Neils Bohr had just bought,
His brain, his friends claimed, came to naught,
He said “Don’t be jerks,
I’ve heard that it works
If indeed, you believe it or not!”
(This one’s not mine either)
A dying mosquito exclaimed,
“A chemist has poisoned my brain!”
The cause of his sorrow
Was para-dichloro
Diphenyl-trichloroethane.
Limericks aside though, I wanted to write a few sentences about a compelling Ted Talk that got me interested in origami. Robert Lang is a retired astrophysicist who gave up his job to pursue a career in origami folding. He set his math background to work with a concept called Circle Packing to tackle the problem of generating two dimensional blueprints, or ‘folding patterns’, corresponding to any conceivable three dimensional object, such that, if the folds were performed in the correct order, you could make any object out of a single sheet of paper without cutting, gluing, etc. The idea of circle packing describes the representation of a 3D figure as a unique pattern of circles on a 2D plane. Then you connect the circles with lines, and if you fold along these lines, you get the object! Obviously easier said than done 🙂 but Robert Lang wrote a computer program that generates these blueprints based on stick figures input into the program. Here’s the link to his Ted Talk if you’re interested: http://blog.ted.com/2008/07/31/idea_square_ori/ and I’ve attached pictures of a few of his creations, with their corresponding folding patterns. Thanks again to everyone who has a chance to read my posts, and I really appreciate the comments!
Gabe
