Lament of an artist

I recently came upon a tweet by Kathy Sierra. Here it is:

So I went ahead and downloaded the PDF file and read it through. Man did it resonate! Here’s a quote that practically captured the essence:

Mathematics is an art
- Paul Lockhart

Lockhart was describing how the current education in America was eroding the sense of wonder, discovery and thrill of mathematics in children and young adults. First, go download his article Mathematician’s Lament (about 25 pages) and read at least the first and last few pages if you’re in a hurry.

I don’t know much about the American education system, but the way it’s described, it’s bad. And the Singapore education system (at least with regards to math) is similar (well, at least from what I remember when I was studying). The sense of discovery just wasn’t there.

When I was about ten (I think), my parents bought me an encyclopedia set, Childcraft. The first book I went for? The one on mathematics.

I gorged myself on the puzzles, stories, thought experiments in the book. For example, there was that crossing of river puzzle, with a farmer and a sheep and a wolf. There was a story excerpt of Flat World, where Points and Lines meet the 2 dimensional Squares and Pentagons. And there’s a “proof” of the non-existence of vampires. And … wait, what? You want to know the proof?

Ok, suppose vampires suck blood out of victims and the victims become vampires themselves. Suppose there’s only 1 vampire in the beginning. On the first night, he bites one person. By the next day, there are 2 vampires. 2nd night, each vampire bites another person. So there are 4 the next day. I’m sure you can see how this goes… at some point, the doubling vampire population simply overshot the entire world population. But we’re still here, aren’t we? Hence no vampires.

Of course, that proof goes out the window if vampires don’t need to bite every night… or if they can control who to turn into a vampire… ok, moving along…

Oh yes, with this encyclopedia in hand, I learnt about the fun parts of mathematics. I learnt about the magic numbers of 3, 4 and 5 forming a standard 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 Pythagorean triangle long before I actually knew what Pythagoras’ Theorem was. I read about how the ancient Greeks were racking their brains for how to get a right angle, and they used a length of rope with evenly spaced knots. They found that a triangle with sides of 3 knot length, 4 knot length and 5 knot length, created a right angle at one of the corners. That was fascinating.

There was also this section on Fibonacci numbers, and a story about rabbits. The algorithm behind the sequence was presented with an interesting back story of an expanding bunny population. I remember in university, my professor mentioned the sequence and I exclaimed, “Fibonacci sequence!”. And my friend, who’s sitting beside me, turned to me and asked, “You know about this?”. Really? A math university student who don’t know about Fibonacci sequences?

I don’t know about you, but for all the talk about Asians being better (at math) (here and here), I think most of us still don’t get to see math as an art, as something beautiful to contemplate. I started out seeing math as fun, then later on as something scientific and not-so-fun. And after my service in the military, I went to university, and suddenly it’s fun again. I guess it took me a fresh perspective to view math once more…

And I think programming is like math. No, I’m not bringing in the meta-blogging type of “This blog topic is something like that” and go off on some far out analogy. I mean programming, like math, requires one to see the abstract, manipulate pieces of information in the mind’s eye, come up with solutions in the ether, and then bring forth the solution into the world.

Right now if you ask me about math, like really hard core math, I’d probably stumble. Partly from a long disuse of the principles, but mostly because unconsciously, I’m trying to capture that sense of wonder again. That requires me to shed some undesirable shackles and discipline, and allow myself to not know everything on the topic. Math fun is back in vogue.

P.S. The next book in the Childcraft encyclopedia I pounced on? The one with stories. I guess I’m a sucker for fiction. *smile*

Follow up on geodynamo idea

I toyed with the idea of using Earth as part of a gigantic dynamo to generate electricity previously. A few arguments were deliberately left out, to encourage you to think about it, and so that I’ll have something else to talk about here. *smile*

Jonathan didn’t think it will work. His argument was that the support structures in space won’t be able to hold (steady). And xero suggested using humans as generators. Let’s look at both of their comments.

Side effects of the geodynamo

Having a large part of the structure out in space should mitigate the gravitational pull of Earth. With some thrusters thrown in, the use of light-weight and strong material for the structure, the whole thing should work. I think.

I’m not so much concerned if it’ll work, but what happens if it does work. I’m concerned about the electromagnetic influence on marine life, on living things around the equatorial region. And most of all, I’m concerned if it will affect Earth’s rotational spin, that it will slow it even more.

As programmers, we seldom have to think about the consequences of our creations. We’re more concerned with making it work. The best examples I have right now are the social media tools, such as Twitter. The microblogging platform flourished, with consequences ranging from people complaining it’s a time-waster and productivity-drainer, to people using it as part of their business strategies, to connecting with people they would never have met.

But there’s a difference in enabling something waiting to happen, and something that’s not.

Mini dynamos. Thousands of them.

Instead of one gigantic monster of a generator, we could have thousands of mini dynamos. Human powered. The idea is to connect gym bikes to power generators. While we’re exercising, all that energy is lost, so we might as well generate some electricity.

I disagree with xero on paying people minimum wages to go exercise. Something gets optimised whenever an incentive is introduced, particularly if it’s monetary… and if you don’t agree with that, go talk to a manager. The ideal case is that people exercise because they want to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and they want to help generate some alternative sources of electricity. Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation.

On the thought of gym bikes, what about cars? We have many of them on the planet, and their wheels are spinning. And not really doing anything else.

Can we attach some power generating contraption to car wheels? If we’re burning fossil fuels to turn them, we might as well try to salvage something out of it. It wouldn’t totally negate the loss of energy (that’s almost like a perpetual motion machine), but we would waste less of it. It’s like those lights on bicycles that light up when the biker is pedalling.

Let me know what you think. And I still want my free electricity.

[If you're Chinese, Happy Lunar New Year to you!]

How can we have free electricity?

I was travelling on the bus. My thoughts were flying around doing their flights of imagination. “It would be wonderful to have electricity available everywhere.” Then came “It would be even more wonderful if it’s free. Or at least cheap.”

Then I wondered, “How can we have free electricity?”

“We would need something to generate it.” And my next immediate thought was “A dynamo!” I was remembering my physics lessons long ago, when we were playing with magnets. One of the interesting things I remembered was a spinning magnet as part of a dynamo to generate electricity.

So, we need an easy way to do rotation, preferably on a big scale. And the biggest thing that rotates? Earth.

I was thinking of building some structure to house some magnetic material along the equator. Earth is spinning at about 465 metres per second. That should count for something. As the Earth rotates, that structure “rubs” another supporting structure above it, using the theory of the dynamo, we’ll get electricity!

I don’t even know if the theory behind it is sound. Assuming it is, what’s going to hold the upper structure? It can’t be supported by the Earth, because that would defeat the purpose, since it will spin along too. Then came my next breakthrough.

Supporting structures in space.

There will be satellites holding up the structure. I thought of having just one single structure, but the mechanics of holding it steady might be tough. Have you ever played that game where you have to hold a rod of metal with a loop, and slowly pass it through a maze of metal wires without touching the wires? You need steady hands.

Ok, that drawing was bad… I hope you get the idea.

Anyway, several separate satellites to hold up the structure might be better. Now that I look at the diagram carefully, I’m not even sure if the structure would hold up… perhaps some super light material…

Assuming this works out fine, I imagine physicists (theory), engineers (building it), mathematicians (calculations) and other scientists would be involved. Programmers too, for the software used to run the satellites and the structure. Biologists too, for the effects of such a large scale of electromagnetic energy on living things near the equator. Particularly the marine biologists, since most of the structure is over the ocean.

Alright, fine. It’s probably not going to work. I’m just saying, what if it works? What if we can get cheap, even free electricity generated this way? What if you can come up with some other way?

What if…