Teaching a kid to read an analog clock can be like pulling teeth, so chances are kids won’t be thrilled at first with the Albert Clock. The digital display clock requires you to perform math problems to figure out the current time. It sounds like a drag at first, but it’s actually pretty fun once you get used to it.

Albert has four levels of difficulty, letting everyone from little ones to grown-up math whizzes have fun with the unique timepiece. The clock was named after Albert Einstein, but you don’t have to be a genius to figure out its functions.

All you do is perform the equations shown on the display. The top line shows the formula to figure out the hour and the bottom line shows an equation for the minutes.

Designer Alex Schlindlbeck says that, had Einstein owned an Albert Clock, he may have become a math wizard. The clever clock is decorative but it’s also a fun way to work a little brain exercise into every day.

The post Working Time: Clock Makes You Do Math to Find the Time first appeared on Gajitz.

Put on your headphones, sit back, and prepare to watch one of the trippiest math-related videos you’ll ever see. Created by French dub techno musician and fractal artist Alexandre Lehmann (who also goes by Ricardo Montalban or Zzzzra), “Overstepping Artifacts” is a truly bizarre journey. It takes the viewer through an otherworldly landscape that is part geometry, part biology, part steampunk architecture, and all very mesmerizing to watch.

The short video was created using fractal-creating software that accompanies Lehmann’s own music. The fractal shapes shift and change as though alive, constantly taking on new shapes. At times they seem alive. At other times, they seem like hostile parts of alien worlds.

The Overstepping Artifacts video is part of Lehmann’s ongoing Musicians with Guns series. Music is his main passion; 3D fractal art is a tangential interest but happens to dovetail nicely with the unique sounds of his original music pieces when they are played together. You can check out more of his work on his SoundCloud page.

The post Fractal-astic Voyage: Odd Art of Morphing Fractal Shapes first appeared on Gajitz.

This unusual shape looks sort of like a coiled, corrugated garden hose – but it’s actually a mathematical shape that, until recently, were thought to be impossible to visualize in three dimensions. Flat tori were first demonstrated in the 1950s, and io9 gives a suitably adorable description of exactly how to imagine one. They say: “To imagine a flat torus, imagine a video game with a wraparound screen — for instance, if you go up the top side, you emerge from the down side. […] Imagine taking a square flat torus, wrapping it into a tube, and then bending its ends so they met to form a ring.”

Until now, it was assumed that an object like this couldn’t be demonstrated in 3D because of the distortion that takes place with the wrapping and the bending. But researchers in France thought outside of the tube and added corrugations to the shape, overcoming the distortion problem. These surfaces are known as smooth fractals, which are somewhere between regular surfaces and fractals. Apparently the discovery could help mathematicians do their thing…but all we can think of is a sudden craving for smooth fractal donuts.

The post This is an Impossible to Visualize 3D Mathematical Shape first appeared on Gajitz.

For those of us who weren’t blessed with superior math skills, calculators are a handy way to figure out complex equations. But do we rely on them too much? The makers of a calculator called QAMA think so, and they’ve come up with a novel way to combat this laziness. Before the calculator will give you an answer to your math problem, you have to provide an estimate – and that estimate has to be close to the real answer. It might seem like a rough way to teach math, but according to the inventor kids love the challenge and the reward of estimating correctly.

The QAMA (Quick Approximate Mental Arithmetic) was invented by physicist Ilan Samson who wanted to encourage students to think on their own rather than letting calculators do all of the work for them. The calculator has two modes: its regular mode in which you have to provide an estimate, and one in which it will provide the answer outright. In the latter mode, however, its lights will flash to alert everyone in the area to your laziness. Not to worry, though: even in estimate mode, the calculator will provide the answer outright after five incorrect estimates.

The post Mental Math: Calculator Only Gives You Answers You Know first appeared on Gajitz.