You may have wondered how good mathematicians are at telling a joke. Here’s mathematician Henry Segerman telling a topology joke — the one about the coffee cup and the donut: Here’s another mathematician, Ian Agol, telling the same joke (filmed by Scientific American.) Here’s Jim Fowler making the joke wordlessly: Three anonymous, shy mathematicians make the […]
Tag: donut
Holes in donuts – the philosophical implications (part 2)
In 2001, professor Achille C. Varzi, of Columbia University, New York, very probably became the first philosopher to author a paper focusing specifically on the ramifications of holes in donuts (that’s ‘doughnuts’ in the UK), as we reported. But the paper wasn’t, in the literal sense, the last word on donut holes. In 2012 the subject […]
Holes in doughnuts – the philosophical implications (part 1)
Achille C. Varzi, who is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, New York, is interested in the philosophical implications of holes and voids, prompting a unique investigation into a special subset of hole-bearing entities – namely doughnuts (that’s ‘donuts’ US). “A doughnut always comes with a hole. If you think you can come up with […]
VR – Mysteries of the scent projector (part 1)
For those in the VR (Virtual Reality) world, there’s an old problem, how can scents be reliably delivered to individuals in an audience at the right place and the right time? Although many attempts have been made – with varying degrees of success – it took until 2003 for the vortex ring scent canon to […]