Ivars Peterson

All Stories by Ivars Peterson

  1. Math

    Sliding Around

    Seemingly simple sliding-coin puzzles can be surpassingly tough.

  2. Math

    Chaotic Moon

    Saturn's craggy moon Hyperion tumbles erratically as it orbits the planet.

  3. Math

    Binary Dice

    A set of specially marked, black-and-white dice suggests novel puzzles and games.

  4. Math

    Numbers of No Escape

    Playful iterative processes can get you stuck in mathemagical black holes.

  5. Math

    Tying Down a Random Walk

    Knotting a necktie poses mechanical and mathematical challenges.

  6. Math

    A Mathemusical Potpourri

    Turning numbers and mathematical ideas into musical tones comes in many flavors.

  7. Math

    Celestial Atomic Physics

    Insights from atomic physics lead to new routes for spacecraft.

  8. Math

    Fermat’s Natural Spirals

    Using points to trace out spirals produces intriguing secondary patterns.

  9. Math

    Primes, Palindromes, and Pyramids

    Prime numbers that have the same sequence of digits whether read forward or backward can be built into pyramids.

  10. Math

    Knotted Strings and Inca Accounts

    Researchers are starting to untangle mysterious Inca messages encoded in knotted strings.

  11. Math

    Strange Orbits

    Orbiting bodies can follow weird trajectories, from figure-eight loops to complex, interlocked paths.

  12. Math

    Playing with Ruth-Aaron Pairs

    Home-run records lead to intriguing prime-number patterns.