Student Zulakha Hussain will be surprised. “I’m fed up of answering pointless questions in maths”, she wrote in a website poem. And then: “My wobbly table creaks as I write, then all of the answers go out of sight”. But, maths has an answer at least for her wobbly table. Australian mathematician Burkhard Polster will be surprised if he reads Zulakha’s poem, for he would have recognised the answer as a theory of his own.
You come across a wobbly table almost anywhere — a bar, a restaurant, or even an examination hall as in Zulakha’s poem. If you set a four-legged rectangular table anywhere on the ground, chances are it will wobble. And guidelines are ample. If the glide on the foot of a table leg is missing, buy a replacement. Or just jam a beer coaster under one of the legs… Wait! Literally turning the table against the floor is the easiest answer!
“Intermediate value theory” pinpoints the process. It is drawn on the observation that any curve drawn from above an axis to below it will intersect at some stage. Thus there will always be two points with exactly the same temperature somewhere on Earth. Translated to the context, it promises a spot where all four legs firmly contact the ground, if the table is rotated around its axis. It does not seem to matter how exactly you swivel the table on the spot, granted that you turn roughly around the centre of the table. The numbers of legs, however, do matter and so do certain surfaces.
Three-legged stools rarely wobble because, unlike four legs, three almost always balance with ease. A fourth leg will call for as an extra degree of freedom to reach stability, which is exactly what a rotation brings to pass. Add a fifth leg, and the chances of finding a common ground touching all the legs becomes harder. And it is still harder if the floor has a tiled surface, for the legs can get stuck in the grooves between tiles.
One may ask what kind of theory is that which can only stop a table from wobbling. Well, the theory stops you from falling off a chair when you stand on it when you change a light bulb. It must be useful in firmly positioning household items like fridges and washing machines. If you usually regard pure mathematics as “ivory tower stuff”, this is one incident where it can come up with something snugly useful.
SNEAK PREVIEW
FLORENCE’S VITAL STATISTICS
If you think statistics is cold, lifeless and devoid of human touch, Florence Nightingale holds the biggest surprise for you. Statistics was her second passion. It was tightly connected to her pioneering work in nursing and the improvement of hospital sanitation methods. During the Crimean War, she came up with polar-area charts to dramatically make people aware of the needless deaths due to unsanitary conditions. Through her reformatory methods, notably including the use of statistical devices to generate accurate health care data, she was able to cut down the mortality rate in the hospitals. Karl Pearson, a world authority on statistics, called her a “prophetess” of statistics.
A GEOLOGIST CAN BE SEXY
Previous surveys have shown that the portrait of a scientist is usually not as a good-looking youngman or young woman in the public mind. But ask geologist Michael Magna. He is one of the sexiest men alive according to the Pop culture tabloid ‘People’, which lifts him to the ranks of actors and rock stars, To begin with, The MacArthur “genius” grant recipient was uncomfortable about lending his face to a pop spread, but towards end it dawned upon him that it will help change the image of a scientist and re-assure people it’s cool to go into the field.
QUIZ No.211
1. Which Indian actress starred against a dashing cricketer in her debut film?
– Parveen Babi
– Kamini Kaushal
– Waheeda Rehman
– Sharmila Tagore
1. Parveen Babi (the film: ‘Charitra’, the cricketer: Salim Durrani).
2. If you want to repair your broken fence, you turn to …
– The Godfather
– The Omega Man
– The Farmer’s Wife
– The Weather Man
2. The Godfather (godfather is a small post used to repair fences).
3. Which Nobel laureate wrote a number of poems addressing the beheaded Mary I of Scotland?
– John Steinbeck
– Jacinto Benavente
– Johannes V. Jensen
– Joseph Brodsky
3. Joseph Brodsky (’20 Sonnets to Mary Stuart’ in Russian)
4. Which famous mathematician married his student who herself was a bright mathematician?
– Pythagoras
– Bertrand Russell
– Bernhard Riemann
– Pierre de Fermat
4. Pythagoras
5. The “S” in the name of this singer/band appears as a Dollar sign ($).
– Too Short
– The Strokes
– The Subways
– The White Stripes
5. Too $hort