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The Honeycombs of 4-Dimensional Bees ft. Joe Hanson

Season 1 Episode 32 | 11m 19s

Why is there a hexagonal structure in honeycombs? Why not squares? Or asymmetrical blobby shapes? In 36 B.C., the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro wrote about two of the leading theories of the day. First: bees have six legs, so they must obviously prefer six-sided shapes. But that charming piece of numerology did not fool the geometers of day. They provided a second theory: Hexagons are the m

Aired: 08/02/17
Extras
Can you save the target from his assassin in a square room with bouncy walls?
Can you stack four colored cubes so that each color only shows once on each side?
Set theory is the foundation of all of mathematics. How does it handle infinity?
When you think about math, what do you think of knots? Probably... knot.
In SET, what is the maximum number of cards you can deal that might not contain a SET?
What shape do you most associate with a standard analog clock? Circle or... torus?
Could you explain numbers to someone without using the notion of a number?
If Fermat had a little more room in his margin, what proof would he have written there?
Infinities come in different sizes. So what's the right way to describe the sum?
In the physical world, objects are made of simpler parts. What are numbers made of?
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Can you save the target from his assassin in a square room with bouncy walls?
Can you stack four colored cubes so that each color only shows once on each side?
Set theory is the foundation of all of mathematics. How does it handle infinity?
When you think about math, what do you think of knots? Probably... knot.
In SET, what is the maximum number of cards you can deal that might not contain a SET?
What shape do you most associate with a standard analog clock? Circle or... torus?
Could you explain numbers to someone without using the notion of a number?
If Fermat had a little more room in his margin, what proof would he have written there?
Infinities come in different sizes. So what's the right way to describe the sum?
In the physical world, objects are made of simpler parts. What are numbers made of?