Snow flakes

The physics of snow crystals
by Kenneth G. Libbrecht.

And more about it on his website.

Fractals

What happens if you plot all the roots of
all the polynomials in a certain class?



Image by Sam Derbyshire.

John Baez explains the mysteries behind this image
here and here.

Structured procrastination

Today I want to celebrate the IgNobel prize
awarded to John Perry, a Stanford philosophy
professor who wrote a wonderful essay
highlighting the idea of structured procrastination.

Origami

This beatle..



..is folded from a single square of paper following the
above crease pattern. Robert Lang's origami page
is certainly worth a visit.

Sometimes art meets technology: here you can see
a satellite antenna which is origami-folded during
the launch and unfolds seamlessly once in orbit.

Gapminder World

"Our goal is to replace devastating myths
with a fact-based worldview. Our method
is to make data easy to understand."

-- Hans Rosling



Visit Gapminder World and discover
the revealing beauty of data visualization.
Don't forget you can change the horizontal
and vertical axes of the graph and visualize
dozens of different variables.

Conway's game of life

The game of life is an example of how few simple rules
can generate complex behaviors. The first minute of the
video introduces the rules. Then the show begins..



Don't miss the Wikipedia article!

Cargo cult science

Cargo cult science by Richard Feynman



"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.
And you are the easiest person to fool."

- Richard Feynman -

Learning by overimitation

"Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do.
Chimps Don't." -- New York Times article

Suspension bridges

From building your own suspension bridge to an engineering
masterpiece of the early XIX century in less than 5 minutes.

Color perception

The squares marked A and B have the same color.

Image by Edward H. Adelson, M.I.T., who writes
on his website: "These checkershadow images may
be reproduced and distributed freely."

Kudos.

The million dollar page

"The idea is simple: to try and make $1m
by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $1 each."

"The idea only works once and relies on novelty."

- Alex Tew -

http://milliondollarhomepage.com/

o Watch how the ads have built up over time.

Cargo cult