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Smashing beauty: origami crush patterns

Can you tell what this pattern is? Does it look like something humans designed, like the inside of a building? A sculpture? Or is it something created by nature?     Here’s a clue: It took a couple of seconds to create it. That time doesn’t include taking the picture...

Tipping and survival

Life on earth has survived five mass extinctions, periods when a great many types of life forms suddenly disappear.  The most recent mass extinction was many millions of years ago. Since then, our ecology and the climate supporting it has experienced a relatively...

Tolerance and segregation

Our game Tolerance shows how segregation emerges even when individuals are relatively tolerant. In our game, we use two types of crabs with arbitrary differences. Both types are tolerant, so there’s no asymmetry or one-sidedness. The game includes an alternative...

Complimentary colors

Here’s an example of what Kathy suggested in her common on the spiral coloring book. One pair of complimentary colors is blue and orange.   Below is the original image from the coloring...

The art & science of spirals

In a recent post, I discussed how looking at forests and fractals evokes a sense of awe.   The research studies found that natural fractal structures, like trees, and man-made fractals, like certain art, stimulates awe, altruism. It might be that looking at these...

Math, pattern & awe

Many scientists have confessed to experiencing awe when beholding nature’s vast complexity of forms. But only recently have researchers systematically studied causes and consequence of experiencing awe. One cause of awe is vastness of scope, size or complexity,...