May 13, 2009
Crocheting a Coral Reef
I had no idea that crochet was best way to model hyperbolic geometry. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard about hyperbolic geometry until I watched the video below, a TEDtalk given this past February by science writer Margaret Wertheim. Her project—crocheting a coral reef—began in 2005 and was inspired by the effects of climate change. Part art, part math, part biology, there are now thousands of these models, 99% created by women. (I was disappointed to learn that Wertheim visited the Smithsonian last December and I missed it. Darn.)
(Hat tip: GrrlScientist)
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[...] TEDTalk, this time from 2004. “Michael Merzenich studies neuroplasticity—the brain’s powerful [...]
[...] a hyperbolic plane) as often as they want to, for example. This is just the way nature works, says Margaret Wertheim, one of the sisters behind the Institute for Figuring. “All these frilly and crenelated [...]