Among electric fish, those that live in freshwater have their generating cells arranged “in series”; in saltwater they appear “in parallel.”
Seawater conducts better than fresh water, so freshwater fish need to generate a high voltage to overcome the resistance of their medium. Their electricity-producing cells are arranged in series.
Marine fish operate at higher currents but lower voltages, so their electrocytes appear in parallel.
William Stokes’ Pictorial Multiplication Table of 1866 promised to teach multiplication facts to a child of average ability in less than half an hour. It did this by representing each digit with an object:
A TREE means 1, from one trunk springs.
A BIRD means 2, it has two wings.
A BOAT is 3, three sails are shown.
ANIMALS 4, four legs they own.
A MAN means 5, five fingers he.
A HOUSE means 6, six windows see.
A CHURCH means 7, not windows less.
A LADY 8, see eight-flounced dress.
A BRIDGE is 9, nine lamps are found.
A BOY means 0, see hoop so round.
Now each fact can be represented by a picture. Here’s the “twice” table:
These are the products of 2 with the first 12 integers, in order. The second box, representing 2 × 2, depicts a dog, which is an ANIMAL with 4 legs, so 2 × 2 is 4. The sixth box, representing 2 × 6, depicts a TREE and a BIRD, so 2 × 6 = 12. And so on. The first box, which covers the fact that 2 × 1 = 2, is omitted because we’ve already mastered the fact that 1 × 2 = 2 (in the “once” table). The 10th and 11th boxes are blank because multiplication by 10 and 11 are considered so easy that no mnemonic is needed.
How can we remember the “twice” table itself? Stokes provides a verbal rhyme that sums it up:
Twice — Dog, Cot, Reader, Nest, and Bird flying;
Giraffe, Inn, Shower, and Camel dying.
In this way a student can master every fact up to 12 × 12 by memorizing 59 simple pictures (and 12 rhymes). How well this worked, and whether the images could be carried accurately in one’s head through a lifetime, is less clear.
Using a cardboard template, a cloth, and a tripod, psychologist Richard Wiseman found a way to make ordinary people tiny.
The illusion is an improvement on a technique pioneered by Jean Beuchet in the 1960s. More at the link below.
(Richard Wiseman, “A New Version of the Beuchet Chair Illusion,” i-Perception 7:6 [November-December 2016], 2041669516679168.)
By philosopher Steven M. Cahn:
(1) Assume that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, omnimalevolent Demon who created the world.
(2) If the Demon exists, then there would be no goodness in the world.
(3) But there is goodness in the world.
(4) Therefore, the Demon does not exist.
A demonist who wants to deny (4) would need to deny (1), (2), or (3). No demonist would question (1), and it’s difficult to deny (3), but we can escape (2) only by claiming that the world’s good is somehow necessary, that every good in the world is logically needed in order for this to be the worst world that the Demon could have created.
This is the familiar “problem of evil” turned on its head. The notion that all the world’s good (sunsets, Socrates’ free will) is necessary to create maximum evil is just as improbable as that all the world’s evil (bubonic plague, Hitler’s free will) is needed to create maximum good. Unless demonists or theists can produce further evidence in favor of their positions, “the reasonable conclusion is that neither the Demon nor God exists.”
(Steven M. Cahn, “Cacodaemony,” Analysis 37:2 [January 1977], 69-73.)
The English name for 13,000,000,000,000,000,003,019,000,000,000, THIRTEEN NONILLION THREE TRILLION NINETEEN BILLION, is spelled with 1 B, 2 Hs, 3 Rs, 4 Os, 5 Ts, 6 Ls, 7 Es, 8 Is, and 9 Ns.
(Thanks, David.)
On a glass door in the mathematics department at the University of Erlangen–Nürnberg in Germany, this determinant is printed:
Sure enough, X · I – IV · II = II.
Pass through the door and regard it from the other side and you see a different equation:
But this too is true: II = VI · II – X · I.
(Burkard Polster, “Mathemagical Ambigrams,” Proceedings of the Mathematics and Art Conference, 2000.)
An honest number is a number n that can be described using exactly n letters. For example, 8 can be described as TWO CUBED, and 11 as TWO PLUS NINE.
In 2003, Bill Clagett found that
EIGHTEENTH ROOT OF EIGHT HUNDRED EIGHTY-FOUR QUATTUORDECILLION THREE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR TREDECILLION SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY DUODECILLION EIGHT HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX UNDECILLION SIX HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE DECILLION SIX HUNDRED THIRTY-SEVEN NONILLION ONE HUNDRED THREE OCTILLION NINETY SEPTILLION NINE HUNDRED EIGHTY-TWO SEXTILLION FIVE HUNDRED EIGHTY-ONE QUINTILLION FOUR HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT QUADRILLION SEVEN HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR TRILLION NINE HUNDRED THIRTEEN BILLION FOUR HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO MILLION NINE HUNDRED FIFTY-NINE THOUSAND EIGHTY-ONE
contains 461 letters.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.
— Horace Miner, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” American Anthropologist, June 1956
(It’s satire. What’s Nacirema spelled backward?)
Something alarming washed up on a beach near Cherbourg in 1934 — a 25-foot carcass with a camel’s head, a three-foot neck, two shoulder fins, and a seal’s tail. Its bluish-gray skin was covered with what appeared to be fine white hairs, and its liver was 15 feet long.
Was it a sea serpent? A relative of the Loch Ness Monster? Probably not: A local biologist guessed that a whale had pursued herring into local waters and been killed by a liner.
Thirteen years later a 40-foot carcass washed up on the shore near Effingham on Vancouver Island, Canada. At first rumored to be the remains of Caddy, the sea serpent that supposedly haunts Cadboro Bay, it was later identified as a shark.
An optical illusion. All the edges in this image are straight, and each is either horizontal, vertical, or at a 45° angle.
