Mad About Science: Weird, magical math

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Galileo once wrote: “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.”

Take that as literally or figuratively as you want, your decision is based on a number of converging mathematical factors across a span of 13.7 billion years.

Let’s start with what is essentially the foundation of everything: Pi. A mysterious number you might recognize from high school Geometry as 3.14. Perhaps if you’re reading that number in a mirror, you might see it as “PI.E” — fitting, as pies are circular.

Pie (Pi?)

Pi is a curious number. In relation to circles, the circumference is always 3.14 times its diameter, regardless of the size of the circle. However, 3.14 is an approximation, because beyond the decimal point, Pi goes on for infinity. There is no repeating pattern in this limitless chain of numbers, which also means there’s no easy way to account for the numbers that make up Pi. This is wild to think about when you consider that a circle has a beginning and an end, and if you were to use a device to roll a circle into a straight line, it would stop at exactly 3.14 times its diameter.

The sheer magical majesty of Pi is lost on our tiny mortal minds.

If you want a cool party trick to impress your friends, memorize the first 30 digits of Pi. They’ll think you’re some kind of savant.

The magic of math is everywhere, not just in delicious pies. Nature is kind of obsessed with circles and spirals. Planets and stars are spherical, galaxies tend to spiral once they reach a great enough mass. Even small things like snail shells and sunflowers express a unique spirality. Much of this can be expressed by the Fibonacci sequence, whereby adding up the two preceding numbers in the sequence gives you the next number: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on.

When you consider how everything is formed and connected by atoms — which as far as we can tell are tiny spheres — it makes sense that nature loves spirals. A single sphere spinning around will have rounded edges and a bloated center due to centrifugal force, which is the same force that makes you feel like your stomach is inching up your gullet when you’re on a spinning ride at an amusement park. When you have two spheres orbiting each other, they spin around a shared center. Add a third sphere farther out, and you’ll start to see a spiraling effect. Don’t believe me? Take a look at any spiral galaxy where hundreds of millions of stars are being whipped around space by the gravitational force of a supermassive black hole. Nature loves spirals.

Infinity is a human concept, and it’s a concept that’s easier to account for than one of the largest numbers ever conceived by humans. A googol is more than the namesake-inspiration of your favorite search engine. It’s 10 to the 100th power, or a 1 with 100 zeros behind it. That’s a pretty big number, but a googolplex is a one with a googol zeros behind it. There is not enough space in the entire universe to write that number on paper. It’s a number so large that every single computer in existence working together wouldn’t be able to display the figure in its entirety. You would need 1052 solar system-sized hard drives to store a googolplex represented by individual bytes of data. That’s far beyond the amount of all mass in the known universe, thus making a googolplex a completely theoretical number.

Humans have been doing math for a very long time. It’s likely that animals have had some rudimentary sense of counting for potentially tens of millions of years. Domesticated fowl have been observed counting their number of babies, and even wild animals are capable of tracking the number of young they care for and figuring out just how much food they need to eat. However, counting in your head and figuring out the golden ratio are completely different principles. The first examples of written mathematics date back to around 3,000 BCE and were produced by the ancient Sumerians. However, there is historical evidence of humans using counting sticks and marking bones as far back as 30,000 years ago. I wonder what they were counting?

Are you a fan of math and hoping to share the magic of mathematics with others in your community? The library is actively searching for more math tutors to help people of all ages better understand math for school, their careers and their personal curiosity. The library already has a great roster of phenomenal tutors, but as the area’s population grows, so too does the demand for tutors. Our tutors are superheroes, but even a caped crusader needs the help of a strong team.

Do you want to become an Avenger in your community? Apply today to become a volunteer tutor on the library’s website ebonnerlibrary.org/volunteer. The library provides all of the training and support needed to be the best tutor you can be. All we need from you is a couple of hours a week and an eagerness to learn and help.

Being a volunteer tutor comes with a ton of perks. You get to meet all sorts of new people and forge lifelong friendships, you get to make a permanent impact in the lives of those around you, and you get showered with praise and the occasional volunteer appreciation party where the library gives you food and awards for being awesome.

Stay curious, 7B.