Blank Slate | A compendium of idle musings

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• Proof Without Words | Blank Slate

  A couple of months ago, Google honored one of the most famous problems in mathematics -- known as Fermat's Last Theorem -- on the 410th birth anniversary of the man who came up with the theorem: Pierr...

• Measuring a Year | Blank Slate

  Here's a puzzle: You find yourself on an unknown uninhabited planet. You look up the sky and notice a giant star that looks like our sun. It rises in one particular direction and sets in the opposite,...

• Proof Without Words IV | Blank Slate

  Here's an infinite geometric series followed by a visual proof: [Source: Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 62, No. 5] *** Previously on this blog, Proof Without Words I, II, and III.

• Science Never Proves Anything | Blank Slate

  The validity of one the most (if not the most) beautiful and groundbreaking scientific discoveries of all time - Darwinism - is often disputed with a common argument that it is, after all, just a theo...

• Proof Without Words VI | Blank Slate

  Proof that the area of a circle is equal to π × r2. Click here for details. *** Previously on this blog: Proof Without Words I, II, III, IV, and V.

• Proof Without Words II | Blank Slate

  Conjecture: For every natural number n, the sum of the first n odd numbers is n2. In other words: 1 + 3 + 5 + . . . + (2n - 1) = n2 For example, starting with n = 1: 1 = 12 1 + 3 = 22 1 + 3 + 5 = 32…