From Catriona Agg’s endlessly rewarding Twitter feed:
The three smaller squares are the same size. What’s the angle? (The outermost shape too is a square.)
From Catriona Agg’s endlessly rewarding Twitter feed:
The three smaller squares are the same size. What’s the angle? (The outermost shape too is a square.)
On Aug. 6, 1945, 24-year-old Jacob Beser was the radar specialist aboard the Enola Gay when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Three days later, Beser was aboard the B-29 Bockscar when it dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
He is the only person who served as a strike crew member on both missions.
Below him, Japanese marine engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi endured the first bombing during a business trip to Hiroshima, then returned home to Nagasaki in time to receive the second.
He is the only person acknowledged by the Japanese government to have survived both bombings.
A remarkably simple question by Russian scientist A. Savin, from the September/October 1995 issue of Quantum:
A ping-pong ball is tossed into the air. Will it take longer to go up or to come back down?
In 1812, inventor Charles Redheffer caused a sensation in Philadelphia when he announced a perpetual motion machine. Residents could view the device for a fee, he said, but none could approach it lest they damage the apparatus. When city commissioner Nathan Sellers arrived to observe the device, he happened to bring his son Coleman, who noticed something that all the adults had missed: The machine’s cogs were worn on the wrong side. The device that the machine was ostensibly driving was itself impelling the whole apparatus.
Redheffer decamped to New York City and tried again with an altered machine, but Robert Fulton noticed that this one ran unsteadily. He traced a catgut cord to an upper room, where an old man was turning a hand crank. Spectators destroyed the machine, and Redheffer fled the city.
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca, Letters From a Stoic
A problem by Soviet physicist Viktor Lange:
“By lifting up a bucket of coal to a third floor stove we increase the potential energy of the coal by about 800 J (the force of gravity on the coal is about 80 N and it is raised by about 10 m). Where will this additional potential energy go to when this coal is burnt in the stove?”
In the best collective use,
Geese afoot are gaggles
(Even when one goose gets loose,
Falls behind and straggles);
Skein‘s the word for geese in flight.
Turtledoves form dools.
Barren‘s right (though impolite)
For a pack of mules.
Starlings join in murmuration,
Pheasants in a rye,
Larks in lovely exaltation,
Leopards, leap (they’re spry).
Ducks in flight are known as teams;
Paddings when they swim.
Herrings in poetic gleams
Please the wordsmith’s whim.
Cats collect into a clowder,
Kittens make a kindle.
Sloths of bears growl all the louder
As their forces dwindle.
Lapwings gather in deceit,
Apes convene in shrewdness,
Mares in stud (an odd conceit
Bordering on lewdness).
Foxes muster in a skulk,
Squirrels run in drays
While collectives in the bulk
Make up word bouquets.
— Felicia Lamport
A problem by National Security Agency mathematician Wendell W., from the agency’s March 2018 Puzzle Periodical:
Consider the following equations:
a2 × b × c2 × g = 5,100
a × b2 × e × f2 = 33,462
a × c2 × d3 = 17,150
a3 × b3 × c × d × e2 = 914,760
Find positive integers a, b, c, d, e, f, and g, all greater than 1, that satisfy all the equations.
When H.P. Re of Coldwater, Mich., died in 1931, his claim to have the world’s shortest name was up for grabs, and the Associated Press held a sort of contest to find his successor. J. Ur of Torrington, Conn., expressed early confidence because he had no middle initial, but, AP reported:
C. Ek and J. Ek, brothers from Duluth, promptly entered the lists as cochampions. Mrs. V. Ek, not to be outdone, claimed not only the woman’s title, but the mixed doubles championship. A former Duluth policeman said his name was C. Sy.
Then Fairmount, Minnesota, entered E. Py, farmer; Clinton, Iowa, put forward C. Au, J. Au, and W. Au, triple threats; Indiana offered Ed Py, inmate of Newcastle Jail; and Indianapolis made a poor try with Fix Ax.
In the end the palm went to Aaron A of Chicago, who went by A.A., a name that AP noted “leads all others in the Chicago telephone directory, alphabetically as well as longitudinally.” A’s ancestors had been jewelers in Saxony, and a philologist speculated that the surname derived from an old German word for river.