Awesome Math

Amsterdam-based visual effects designer Julius Horsthuis is known for his incredible moving fractal art. Fractalicious 9 is a compilation of his more recent work and offers up a variety of mesmerizing visuals based on mathematical equations.

Penrose tiles are a kind of arrangement in which polygons create patterns that never repeat. Minutephysics teamed up with Aatish Bhatia to explain the grid that underlies Penrose tiles and the math and geometry that prevents repetition. You can play with Penrose and similar patterns on Bhatia’s Pattern Collider.

Electronic instrument maker Elias Jarzombek created this unique synthesizer that looks like an abacus. The otherworldly sounds it makes are controlled by sliding and spinning its triangular “beads” on metal bars, along with turning its side dials. Read more about the Abacusynth on Elias’ website.

Fractal art can be beautiful, hypnotic, and colorful. But with the proper arrangement of pixels, these mathematical patterns can also be dark and downright unsettling. Motion designer Chris Lavelle’s short fractal animation Creation 1 is especially disturbing, especially for those who suffer from trypophobia.

Mathematician and creator Yosuke Ikeda invented this glorious little plaything which uses a series of ramps to move marbles around as you push on it. Multiple AlgoLoops can be combined for more complex patterns. The project’s Kickstarter already has closed, but hopefully we’ll be able to buy these soon.

Frustrated by missing shots on a regular pool table, The Q went ahead and built himself a special kind of pool table where the ball goes in the pocket virtually every time. The trick is its elliptical shape, which sets up the perfect bank shot at every angle. This video from Numberphile explains the geometry at work.

A pendulum with two pivot points is one of the more entertaining mechanisms to watch in action as it descends into chaos. Sam Maksimovich plotted the changes in the two pendulums’ angles and assigned a unique color to each point. As the graph evolved, it turned into a cool piece of fractal art.

Mathematician mc2 shows off a neat digital simulation that shows how a string with 32 balls hung from it might behave when swung like a pendulum. It starts out smoothly enough, but as they slow down, chaotic movements bring the orbs closer to the fulcrum. We’d love to see how this looks in the real world.

Unlike US paper sizes, metric paper sizes like A3 and A4 can be folded into quarters to make smaller standard size sheets. CGP Grey explains the satisfying math of this paper sizing standard, then zooms in and out to see how it relates to the exponential nature of the universe.

It’s estimated that the amount of data stored on the Internet as of 2020 was around 40 zettabytes. If you can’t count that high, MetaBallStudios is here to provide some perspective on the relative size of various data measurements, envisioning a single byte as a 1-millimeter cube, and scaling up from there.

Maths Town teamed up with fellow fractal fanatic Yann Lby to create this hypnotic visual made up of colorful wireframes. For math geeks, the pattern starts as a 2D Mandelbrot fractal but uses its iteration data to project a vertical axis. Blow it up full screen dim the lights, get ready to enter a hypnotic trance.

Millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, septillions… these kind of large numbers are really hard to wrap your mind around. The guys at Riddle attempt to put some of these numbers in perspective using real world examples of things that occur in such quantities.

Computers are pretty capable these days. And while most problems boil down to a series of mathematical computations, Tom Scott points out that there are some kinds of abstract problems that even the smartest programmers with the most powerful supercomputers can’t figure out.

Among the many memorable scenes in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was the one where Charlie and Grandpa Joe steal Fizzy Lifting Drinks. While it’s impossible that sipping a little soda could lift a human, Kyle Hill of Because Science figured out how much gas it would have actually taken to send Charlie sky high.

If you enjoyed Maths Town’s hypnotic fractal zoom video, here’s another one with a very different aesthetic. Rather than filling our eyeballs with vibrant colors, this one is filled with soothing mathematical structures dipped in shiny gold.

Matt Parker’s book Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World tells tales of the catastrophic consequences of mathematical errors in everything from architecture, to sweepstakes, to air traffic control systems. Perhaps it’ll be the kick in the pants you need to actually pay attention in math class.

Computers use a variety of different algorithms to sort items into order. In this mesmerizing clip by programmer Timo Bingmann, we not only see how six different sorting algorithms bring order to chaos, but hear them as well.

While you might think that origami was exclusively an art form, engineers are taking inspiration from the paper-folding craft to create innovative designs that can shape-shift to fit objects to into smaller spaces, and enable compact mechanisms, while decreasing the number of parts used. Veritasium explains.

You have a better chance of being struck by lightning multiple times than winning a big lottery these days. But a couple of decades back, Stefan Mandel figured out that depending on the size of a lottery’s jackpot, if you bought every single combination, you’d be guaranteed a win. He just had to figure out how to buy them all.

21st century design shop Nervous System uses computer simulations to generate laser-cut plywood puzzles inspired by the crystalline structure of sliced geodes. Each puzzle has unique variations in its image, shape, and pieces. In 180-piece and 370-piece variants.

You’d think that chalk would be chalk, but it turns out that some of the brightest scholars on the planet believe that Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk is magical in some way. The Japanese chalk is said to not only write more smoothly and elegantly, but possess some mystical qualities.

Alex Bellos and Edmund Harris’ wonderful coloring book is designed for kids and adults who are fascinated with patterns, geometry, or mathematics. It’s packed with dozens of intricate and soothing designs to help keep your mind distracted from the day’s woes.

Even though there are 365 days in a year there’s a 50% chance that two people in a group of 23 will share the same birthday. Increase the number of people to 75 and there’s nearly a 100% chance of a match. How can that be? Kevin of Vsauce2 explains the math.