Smithsonian.com

Though I was a very good at math in school, I usually found the subject incredibly boring, so much so that I often slept through class (teachers didn’t mind as long as I aced the exams). The one exception was a college math course for biologists that gave us real-world problems like figuring out the number of false positives and negatives if 100 people were given a tuberculosis test. But more often it was like the calculus class in which we had to analyze a fictional Houdini escape trick. It was all theoretical, with rarely any relation to the tangible world around me. Math was dull.

The Calculus Diaries, by Jennifer Ouellette

It doesn’t have to be that way, though, as Jennifer Ouellette demonstrates in her new book The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. There are plenty of opportunities in the world around us to find interesting examples of math, and especially calculus. Ouellette explains how to use calculus to analyze your odds of winning at craps and why your best option is simply not to play. She examines the Thermodynamics Diet, in which you can use calculus (or at least your own judgment) to optimize your diet and exercise regime so that you burn more calories than you consume. She links cholera, the black plague and zombies. (Okay, I’ll admit that last one falls into the fictional category that troubled me so much in school. But she links it to disease epidemiology. And beside, zombies are way more fun than Houdini tricks, at least in my world.)

The book has plenty of math and science history, and plain history itself—William the Conqueror makes an appearance—along with references to pop culture (the Mythbusters) and literature (the Aeneid). There’s a trove of material here for math teachers hoping to catch the attention of non-math students. Historical problems in math and physics show up regularly as do more recent analyses by modern scientists (there’s an actual study that goes with the zombie discussion).

The appendix includes many of the equations and graphs discussed in the text. However, I found that inadequate as I read through the book. What I really wanted was a workbook that would guide me along through the problems and scenarios that Ouellette posed in her writing. But that’s what surprised me: the book made me want to do the math, to work through the equations with a pencil and calculator, to graph out the curves and see for myself how all these things fit together.

I’m not sure I would have pursued math any more than I did if the teachers had made it this interesting in class. But perhaps I wouldn’t have slept through quite so many hours of it.

A sign near an Australian beach warns of the danger of jellies (photo by Sarah Zielinski)

Last week, Bruckner Chase of Santa Cruz set out to become the second person ever to swim across Monterey Bay. He intended to use the publicity surrounding the 14-hour slog to raise awareness about ocean issues.

But then the ocean did a little awareness raising of its own. Thirty minutes into the swim, jellyfish—whose swelling numbers are considered by many to be a symptom of unhealthy seas—began to swarm.

“I’m like, ‘Come on guys, I’m trying to help here,’” Chase said later.

The jellies could not be reasoned with—Chase was soon being stung everywhere, even inside his mouth. He made it through the swim by putting on a wet suit after about two hours, at his wife’s insistence. (She was beside him in an escort boat.) Jellies stopped a California woman attempting the same swim the week before, reportedly stinging her hundreds of times. But even in the wet suit—which protected all but Chase’s face and extremities—conditions were less than pleasant.

“During the last mile,” one news account said, “Chase felt (the jellyfish) oozing through his hands with every stroke and realized ‘that had I not been in a wetsuit, I would not have been able to physically survive.’”

Ah, memories. I spent a chunk of the spring reading stories like this one while researching jellyfish for our 40th anniversary issue, and this summer I haven’t been able to resist keeping up with the latest jelly current events (although I did chicken out of my colleagues’ jellyfish-eating expedition). As usual, the jellies have been up to no good:

• The Mediterranean is jelly soup this summer. Mauve stingers (a creepy glow-in-the-dark variety) shut down several Spanish beaches, and exotic species—like blue buttons and cigar jellies—have been spotted around Malta. A few days ago, a 69-year-old woman was stung by a Portuguese man o’ war (which is technically not a jellyfish) on the Sardinian coast. She went into anaphylactic shock and died.
• Closer to home, black sea nettles have made unwelcome visits to San Diego, another jelly species is plaguing Atlantic City, and at least 10,000 people have been stung near an island off of Georgia (compared to 1,370 in 2006). Lifeguards attribute the stinging streak in part to an unusually robust population of lion’s mane jellies. They’ve been treating the wounds with a product called Jellyfish Squish.
• In New Hampshire, an unwitting lifeguard likely aided the enemy when he tried to remove a dead jellyfish from the beach with a pitchfork. The body broke into floating pieces, stinging more than 100 bathers.

On the bright side, though, scientists have been studying a fish that actually seems to thrive in the jellyfish-infested waters off of Namibia, where most fish species have been pushed out. Cute little bearded gobies are immune to jelly stings and even have a taste for jellies, which make up a third of their diet.

Abigail Tucker is the magazine’s staff writer.

The mimic octopus can look somewhat like a flatfish (credit: Crissy Huffard, copyright California Academy of Sciences)

The mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) has some interesting ways to keep from being eaten. The brown-and-white stripes on its arms resemble the patterning on venomous sea snakes and the coloring of spiny lionfish. And it can vary its shape and positioning to look like a variety of different underwater creatures. For example, when the octopus swims, it can arrange all of its long arms behind its body and impersonate a toxic flatfish, such as a zebra sole. These aren’t perfect impersonations, but they may startle a predator enough that the octopus has time to flee.

In a new study in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, biologists examined DNA sequences of the mimic octopus and 35 of its relatives to create a family tree and determine when each of the mimic’s distinctive traits evolved. They found that the octopus began to swim like a flatfish around the same time that it evolved very long arms. The conspicuous body patterning came later.

That coloring may not all be mimicry, though. The mimic octopus wasn’t discovered until 1998, so scientists are still learning basic characteristics. The bright pattern may be a warning that the octopus isn’t tasty, though it’s not been confirmed that it’s unpalatable to fish or anyone else. However, scientists have witnessed at least one case in which a flounder spit a mimic out after trying to eat it.

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If you’re looking for life outside of our solar system, it makes sense to look for solar systems and planets like our own. You’d want a solar system with a Sun like ours, with lots of planets orbiting around it. One of those planets should be the size of Earth and traveling at a distance around its star similar to the distance that we’re traveling around our Sun. Scientists haven’t found that perfect solar system or planet yet—we’re still unique—but astronomers got a bit closer recently with the discovery of a Sun-like star that is particularly rich in planets.

The sky around HD 10180 (credit: ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin)

The star HD 10180 is about 127 light years away. Astronomers using a telescope in Chile detected the signals of five Neptune-sized planets rotating around the star at periods ranging from 6 to 600 Earth days. They also suspect there may be two other planets, one that is similar to Saturn and orbiting HD 10180 every 2,200 days and another about 1.4 times the size of Earth and orbiting so close and fast to its sun that its year is only 1.18 Earth days long.

Astronomers know of at least 15 systems with three or more planets, but this is the first one to have so many large planets orbiting so close to its star, all in nearly circular paths, and it’s the first to lack a Jupiter-like gas giant.

An engraving depicting the burning of Washington in 1814 (via wikimedia commons)

On the night of August 24, 1814, British troops led by Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn marched on Washington, D.C. and set fire to most of the city. Dolley Madison famously saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and a copy of the Declaration of Independence before she fled to nearby Georgetown. The British didn’t stay long, though; their occupation lasted just 26 hours. What happened?

Current Washingtonians will recognize this scenario, as we’ve had a wild summer of heavy heat and damaging storms. But August 25, 1814 was even worse. The day of the invasion had been hot, 100 degrees. With much of the city aflame the next day, British soldiers kept moving through, lighting more fires. They didn’t notice the darkening skies, the thunder and lightning. City residents knew a bad storm was on its way and quickly took shelter. The British, though, had no idea how bad a D.C. storm could get.

The clouds began to swirl and the winds kicked up. A tornado formed in the center of the city and headed straight for the British on Capitol Hill. The twister ripped buildings from their foundations and trees up by the roots. British cannons were tossed around by the winds. Several British troops were killed by falling structures and flying debris.

The rain continued for two hours, dousing the flames. The British decided it was time to leave. Local meteorologists later wrote in their book Washington Weather:

As the British troops were preparing to leave, a conversation was noted between the British Admiral and a Washington lady regarding the storm: The admiral exclaimed, “Great God, Madam! Is this the kind of storm to which you are accustomed in this infernal country?” The lady answered, “No, Sir, this is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city.” The admiral replied, “Not so Madam. It is rather to aid your enemies in the destruction of your city.”

Was the admiral right, or did the storm stop the British rampage?

President Madison returned to the city on August 27, and a peace between the two nations was signed the next year. Though Congress briefly considered abandoning Washington to make a capital somewhere else, the city was eventually rebuilt.

Tornadoes are rare in D.C., which makes the 1814 incident even more amazing. Three struck that day in 1814 (they may have all been the same one, though) and only seven others have been reported since. The most recent occurred in 1995; it whipped through the National Arboretum. Damage was limited to uprooted trees.