full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math of coral

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Now some of you are sitting here thinking, "What planet are these people on? Why on earth are you crocheting a reef? Woolenness and wetness aren't exactly two concepts that go together. Why not chiesl a coral reef out of mrlbae? Cast it in bronze." But it tunrs out there is a very good reason why we are crocheting it because many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular kind of structure. The firlly crenulated forms that you see in calors, and kelps, and sponges and nudibranchs, is a form of geometry known as hyperbolic gerotmey. And the only way that mathematicians know how to model this structure is with cceohrt. It happens to be a fact. It's almost impossible to model this structure any other way, and it's almost ilopssbmie to do it on computers. So what is this hyperbolic geometry that corals and sea slugs embody?

Open Cloze


Now some of you are sitting here thinking, "What planet are these people on? Why on earth are you crocheting a reef? Woolenness and wetness aren't exactly two concepts that go together. Why not ______ a coral reef out of ______? Cast it in bronze." But it _____ out there is a very good reason why we are crocheting it because many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular kind of structure. The ______ crenulated forms that you see in ______, and kelps, and sponges and nudibranchs, is a form of geometry known as hyperbolic ________. And the only way that mathematicians know how to model this structure is with _______. It happens to be a fact. It's almost impossible to model this structure any other way, and it's almost __________ to do it on computers. So what is this hyperbolic geometry that corals and sea slugs embody?

Solution


  1. chisel
  2. corals
  3. geometry
  4. crochet
  5. impossible
  6. frilly
  7. turns
  8. marble

Original Text


Now some of you are sitting here thinking, "What planet are these people on? Why on earth are you crocheting a reef? Woolenness and wetness aren't exactly two concepts that go together. Why not chisel a coral reef out of marble? Cast it in bronze." But it turns out there is a very good reason why we are crocheting it because many organisms in coral reefs have a very particular kind of structure. The frilly crenulated forms that you see in corals, and kelps, and sponges and nudibranchs, is a form of geometry known as hyperbolic geometry. And the only way that mathematicians know how to model this structure is with crochet. It happens to be a fact. It's almost impossible to model this structure any other way, and it's almost impossible to do it on computers. So what is this hyperbolic geometry that corals and sea slugs embody?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
straight line 4
mathematicians thought 4
coral reef 3
coral reefs 3
hyperbolic geometry 3
sea slugs 3
euclidean space 3
hyperbolic space 3
feet high 2
crochet models 2
global warming 2
spherical space 2
straight lines 2
parallel postulate 2
general relativity 2
code lead 2


Important Words


  1. bronze
  2. cast
  3. chisel
  4. computers
  5. concepts
  6. coral
  7. corals
  8. crenulated
  9. crochet
  10. crocheting
  11. earth
  12. embody
  13. fact
  14. form
  15. forms
  16. frilly
  17. geometry
  18. good
  19. hyperbolic
  20. impossible
  21. kelps
  22. kind
  23. marble
  24. mathematicians
  25. model
  26. nudibranchs
  27. organisms
  28. people
  29. planet
  30. reason
  31. reef
  32. reefs
  33. sea
  34. sitting
  35. slugs
  36. sponges
  37. structure
  38. thinking
  39. turns
  40. wetness
  41. woolenness