George Hart, of the Museum of Mathematics, writes a weekly column at Make Magazine called “Math Monday.” A few weeks ago he showed how to make a hyperboloid of one sheet out of 32 shish kabob skewers and 176 hair rubber bands. (Here is a direct link to the instructions.) We just finished talking about…
Tag: quadric surface
Flashlights and conic sections
Recently, Ξ over at the 360 blog wrote about hyperbolic light (which was inspired by the article, “The Shape of Lamp Shade Shadows” by Kenneth E. Horst, The Physics Teacher, Volume 39, March 2001). They were looking at the pattern of light on the wall emitted by a desk lamp with a cylindrical lampshade. They observed that the…
David Richeson: Division by Zero 