Sunday, December 24, 2006

Mathmatical Knitting

I've stumbled upon these Mathematical Knitting Sites. Very interesting and quite beautiful as well. I don't understand any of the math but aesthetically they are wonderful.
This is a link to The Hyperbolic Reef Project. Mind blowing.
And another to an article about crocheting hyperbolic planes.
Crochet hyperbolic plane models
Here is a page of knitting links

This is from The Christian Science Moniter. There is a picture of one here too.

Crocheting what Euclid couldn't grasp

A visiting scholar at Cornell University has taken both the math world and, more recently, the art world by storm with a touchable form of advanced geometry. Daina Taimina,a mathematician and crocheter, discovered a way to create durable and easy-to-use models of hyperbolic space. People have been attempting this ever since the concept emerged in the early 1800s and overturned Euclidean geometry's assumptions about parallel lines...

Why spandex is like space/time
Who would have thought that spandex would come in handy to help people grasp Einstein's theory of relativity?

IT'S A WHAT? This crocheted 'hyperbolic pseudosphere' teaches students about three-dimensional relationships between parallel lines.
STEVE ROWELL/THE INSTITUTE FOR FIGURING

Jim Borgardt, an associate professor of physics at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., brings out a stretchy membrane to represent space and time, and places a marble or heavy ball on it to show how it's affected by various objects. Dr. Borgardt explains that the moon orbits the earth not because the two masses are attracted to each other, as Newton theorized, but because the earth forms a dimple in the space/time membrane, and the moon is trapped in that dimple. A heavier ball gets the class talking about black holes, because the ball sinks so deeply that it's surrounded by the membrane. "If you sit there and try to explain that just with words, some people's heads are spinning, whereas if you get something they can see - even though it's not a perfect metaphor - at least it gives them a road map," Borgardt says.
And yet another article
I think I may have to try to make one of these. There are some directions here. I wish I were somewhere I could take a class on how to make them.
Here's a book to check out. A Treasury Of Mathmatical Knitting . It got really bad reviews though.

Back again. Here is my first try at one. It wasn't hard but I can really see how it demonstrates how things grow exponentially. You start out with a 20 link chain, double a stitch every few stitches and add a link every time you reach the end of a line.

It isn't long before you're thinking "Yikes, am I ever going to get to the end of this line?"

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