When a math museum moves, geometry helps

Good morning. It’s Monday. We will discover how the National Museum of Mathematics solved a problem that had nothing to do with quadratic equations or exponential functions. We’re also looking at a gathering in Flaco’s memory on a beautiful day in Central Park.

The mathematical problem that Richard Rew faced the National Museum of Mathematics it was not about real numbers, algebraic numbers or transcendental numbers.

“But it is about geometry and spatial perception,” said Cindy Lawrence, the museum’s general manager.

The problem was whether an exhibit would go through the door and up a few steps.

It was moving day for the museum, which moved into a former gym at 225 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, around the corner from its old house next door on East 26th Street. The Fifth Avenue location is a temporary space that the museum is expected to occupy for a year as it prepares for its new permanent home.

In the new pop-up space, the museum continues to put the fun factor in math, with hands-on exhibits. The museum’s square-wheeled tricycles are positioned near the center of the new space. (They roll smoothly because the wheels fit into chain arches that keep the axles level.)

A few steps away is a display with interactive screens. On one hand, museum visitors can play Pachelball’s Cannon, a video game designed to teach what happens when a cannonball’s trajectory changes. “Pachelball” is a play on the name of the German baroque composer Johann Pachelbelwho wrote “Canon in D,” the wedding piece that brides love and many musicians hate.

When showing off the temporary space last week, Lawrence explained how the museum had adapted design elements left behind by the gym, such as a giant wall photo of the Brooklyn Bridge. The museum added lettering to make the bridge mathematically relevant: “1,640 feet of pure parabola.”

The exhibit that was transported by Rew, who operates a Newark company that builds and refurbishes museum exhibitswas partly based on Truchet tiles, named after Sébastien Truchet, a French priest during the time of Louis XIV. Truchet posited that squares decorated with simple patterns could be arranged in a seemingly infinite number of ways.

That sounds theoretical. The exhibition is anything but. It looks like a platform with model railways running between model evergreens and scale-built ponds, with two model beavers gliding around on the tracks. (Lawrence said the museum chose the beavers to increase its appeal to children who don’t like model trains.)

No matter how museum visitors manipulate the tiles under the tracks, a mathematical principle ensures that the beavers do not collide with each other.

On the way to its place in the pop-up, the exhibition first had to go through the front door and up a few steps that, appropriately for this museum, were intersected by a railing. The railing was removable, but the four-inch anchor posts remained at the top and bottom of the steps.

Would it erase the messages?

Without touching a tape measure, Lawrence said this would happen. She is that good at geometry and spatial perception.

“Math skills come in handy when you have to get something through the door or when you have to pack your car and you have a lot of suitcases,” she said, before explaining how she squeezed in five people, nine suitcases and three backpacks. gets into an SUV during a recent family vacation.

She showed off a selfie from the trip as the train track exhibit went through the door with a few inches to spare. With a lift from Rew and his colleagues, he rose above the four-inch posts, and it wasn’t long before Lawrence was beaming as the beavers darted around the tracks.

Weather

It will be a mostly cloudy day, with temperatures in the low 50s. Expect a chance of rain overnight, with temperatures dropping into the upper 40s.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until March 24 (Purim).

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They remembered the soft sound of his screams. The piercing orange color of his eyes. The bon vivant as he ate a rat.

They were talking about Flaco, the famous Eurasian eagle owl who died on February 23. He was praised Sunday by hundreds of people who gathered under an oak tree in Central Park, one of his many haunts. Some were old bird watchers. Some had been new bird watchers when they heard about Flaco’s unlikely escape from the Central Park Zoo and his life in the urban wilderness. Some were almost in tears.

The tree they gathered around served as a memorial, with drawings and photos of Flaco, handwritten messages, stuffed animals and stuffed animals.

Nan Knighton, a writer, arrived at the meeting with a poem she had composed and memories of the three hours Flaco spent on the ledge outside her Upper East Side window. She said those three hours changed her life forever, even though she didn’t know who he was at the time. She thought he was an ordinary owl.

She then texted a photo to her daughter, who recognized it.

“Next to childbirth,” Knighton said, “this was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced.”

Jacqueline Emery, a birdwatcher who lives on the Upper East Side, said she had spent “hundreds, I mean hundreds, of nights” with Flaco as he explored the park. In contrast, Julia Hutchinson, an artist living in Union City, NJ, said she had only seen him once, in February 2023.

He was ‘just a little bundled ball of feathers.’

Then he roared. That, she said, “was a very special moment.”

Jacqueline Simon-Gunn, a writer and psychologist who lives on the Upper West Side, said she was working on a book about Flaco as an allegory.

“He tapped into something in me, which I think obviously appealed to other people, made me want to live better, live freely or make me feel like anything was possible and dream big,” she said. and added, “It was such a treat to see him free and experiencing life.”

She said Flaco made her proud to be a New Yorker and pushed her to change her life and take bigger risks. “We are often inspired by heroes because of the way they live,” she said. “When Flaco left the zoo, he became heroic because he offered us the opportunity to find the hero within ourselves.”

METROPOLITAN diary

The boxer

Dear Diary:

It was 1981 and I was working in an office building in Lower Manhattan.

After 5pm the door from the lobby to Broadway closed and we had to leave through the Irish pub to the back of the building. This happened very often.

Depending on the day of the week and the general mood, some of us stayed for a few drinks before heading home. The bartenders got to know us.

At the time, I was living in Bergen County with my family and our young boxer sister. At one point I mentioned Sis to Brian, one of the bartenders. He told me he loved boxers and had them growing up, but he hadn’t seen one in years.

One Friday I heard that Brian would be working a rare Saturday shift the next afternoon.

I put Sis in our car and drove to Manhattan, parked in front of the pub and went inside to tell Brian I had a surprise for him.

The place was empty, so he came outside with me and I let Sis get out of the car. Brian was thrilled. He stroked and hugged sister with tears in his eyes.