(last update 24-Sep-98)
Note: If you are here for help with calculus,
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Pictures of Hot Women (it's not what you think)
Politically Incorrect Thoughts
Dynacomp Or you may call them (from North America) at Turbo Almanac is a DOS program that features the following: BTW one of these days, I am going to make a Windows version of the Almanac,
and it will be shareware. But I'm pretty busy right now, so don't hold your
breath. But here is something you can download. If you are interested in
celestial navigation, you know that in order to practice it, you need a
nautical almanac. The Turbo Almanac can prepare
a printable one. You can download a printable nautical almanac by
I have an interest in astronomy, especially the aspect of it that uses
mathematics to predict the motions of the heavens. To that end, I have
prepared an almanac program called Turbo Almanac. Unfortunately, I cannot
offer it over the net as shareware because I signed a contract with a
software publisher giving them exclusive rights to distribute
it. You can order Turbo Almanac from them by writing to:
Astronomy
178 Phillips Rd.
Webster, NY 14580
Easy to use menu driven interface.
Perpetual Gregorian, Jewish, and Islamic calendars,
including date conversions and holidays.
Calculate rise, set, and transit times of the sun,
moon, planets (except Pluto), and over 300 stars
for any date (If you order, email me and I'll send you an
updated star file that gives
Turbo Almanac access to over 700 stars).
Calculate exact position in the sky and in the
celestial sphere of the sun, moon, etc. for any date
and time and from any point on earth.
Calculate exact times of lunar quarters,
lunar nodes, seasons, apogee, perigee, apohelion perihelion, and more.
Predict eclipses and track solar eclipses over
the earth's surface.
Plot planetarium of the sky as viewed at any time
from any point on earth. Includes point and click
feature for obtaining data on any object shown.
Star Identifier -- if you see an object outside
and can roughly tell Turbo Almanac its azimuth and
elevation and what time you saw it, it will tell you what it is.
Automatic celestial navigation sight reduction.
Prepares a printable nautical almanac for any
month of any year.
On line, context sensitive help.
and more
If you have questions, feel free to email me with them by
clicking here
clicking here
And Now -- Something Special to Please Your Eyes
To download some cool NASA artworks of Saturn's
moons,
click here
The background image for this page is a plot of a polar graph of sin(r)/r, where r is the radial
vector. You can download a gif of it by
Background Image for this page
clicking here
I am a Beatles fan (it comes from coming of age in the 60's). You can download a zip file containing
lyrics to a most of the Beatles songs by
Beatles Lyrics
clicking here
You can also download a contact sheet of Beatles album covers by
clicking here
Now here is a Beatles trivia question. While in the midst of
recording one of the Beatles albums, Paul McCartney attended a concert at
which one of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti was on
the program. In the concerto, McCartney heard a sound that so impressed him
that he went back to
his producer, George Martin, and asked if they might include that sound in
one of the songs on the
album. George Martin was a classically trained musician, and had no
trouble arranging the sound
into one of the songs. For 1966 vacupoints, name the album, the song, and
the sound to which this
story refers. Send me you answer (or if you give up, request the answer) by
clicking here.
And it is that impression that Debussy sought to reproduce in The
Engulfed Cathedral. For 642
vacupoints, what is the name of the kingdom where the cathedral stood?
And for an additional
642 vacupoints, figure out how the number, 642, is related to the answer
(that's a hint, folks -- try a little
math). Send your answer, or request the answer via email by
I also like to listen to classical , especially Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Beethoven, and
Debussy. To download images of these five,
Classical Composers
click here
Now here is a classical music trivia question: Debussy
composed a popular piece
that you might have heard called The Engulfed Cathedral. He based
the music on an ancient
French legend about a lowland kingdom whose dikes kept the sea from rushing
in and drowning
its subjects. The pride of this tiny kingdom was its great cathedral with
its one hundred bells to
call the faithful. It was said that the sound of the bells had the power to
purify the heart, and indeed
the subjects of this kingdom were by and large honest, good, and pious
people. But one notable
exception was the king's beautiful daughter, who was spoiled, vain, and would
stop at nothing to
get her way. When the king refused to raise taxes in order to satisfy the
princess's appetite
for golden gowns and precious jewelry, she decided that if she couldn't have
the riches of the kingdom
for herself, then nobody would. She obtained the key to the dikes by
seducing the innocent and naive
hunchback lad with whom the king had entrusted it. And once having the key
in hand, she proceeded
to the sluice gate and opened it. The sea, of course, flooded in,
drowning everybody in the
kingdom, including the princess, and inundating every building, covering
even the highest spires
of the cathedral. But it is said that those who are pure of heart who stand
at the sea's edge can still
today hear the one hundred bells chiming beneath the waves.
clicking here
I am the son of a math professor, and my love of math began early in my
life, largely because
at that age, Dad was my hero, and I wanted to be like him. He was also a
great teacher. I like to
think that I inherited some of his gift for teaching. I enjoy connecting
with someone who comes to
me struggling with a homework problem and goes away with a new
understanding. If you are struggling with something in algebra, trig, first 4 semesters
of calculus, abstract
algebra, or real analysis, or if you just like to gab about any of these
subjects, consider emailing
me by
I have prepared a DOS program that is a great aid in doing some math
problems, as well as
physics and chemistry problems. It is a complex number calculator with
dozens of functions from
those as mundane as square root to those as abstract as Jacobian elliptic
functions. There is a
help message on each key that gives details about it, including accuracy, identities, and uses
of the function. In addition,
there are scads of online physics constants, as well as a periodic table with atomic weight and
plenty of physical, chemical, thermodynamic, and isotope data on each
element. This one is
published as shareware, and you can download it from the Coast archive by
Ramanujan was especially fascinated by unusual properties of integers and had an uncanny
ability quickly to find -- off the top of his head -- some unique property of almost any integer
you might name. When one of his friends came to visit him in the hospital, he mentioned to
Ramanujan that
he rode in cab number 1729, and that there didn't seem to be anything unusual about that number.
"Oh no," replied Ramanujan. "That is a very unusual number."
He then went on to explain why. For 1729 vacupoints, name the unusual property of this number.
Send me your answer (or if you give up, request the answer) via email by
Mathematics
clicking here
I am currently working on an online calculus
tutorial,
much of which is already on line. You can see the what's currently
available by
clicking here
hahn@netsrq.com
clicking here
Here is a math trivia question.
Svinivasa Ramanujan
was a self-taught
mathematician from
India. After correspondence with G. H. Hardy at Cambridge University in England, Hardy sponsored his
moving there
in order that he might be where the action was. Ramanujan did his best work during that time,
but the climate did not agree with him. He took sick and ended up spending many of his days
in a hospital room.
Svinivasa Ramanujan 1887-1920
clicking here
.
Here's a Cute Problem
In a certain high school there are N students, each
of whom has a locker. The lockers are numbered 1 through N. Of course
a locker may be either open or closed. When a closed locker becomes open
or an open locker becomes closed, we shall call that a change of state.
On one particular morning, all the lockers start out closed. The first
student arriving decides to create a little mischief and opens every locker,
in order, starting with number 1. The second student arrives and sees the
situation, and this student closes every second locker, in order,
starting with number 2. The third student arrives and changes the state
of every third locker, in order, starting with number 3. Likewise the
fourth student changes the state of every fourth locker, in order, starting
with number 4. This process continues until every student has arrived
and done this, each skipping one more locker than the last student,
until finally the Nth student changes the state of the
Nth locker only. In ten words or less, tell me which lockers remain open.
Send me your answer (or if you give up, request the answer) via email by
clicking here
.
Google?
I have been informed that
my home page shows up if you search on the word google. So for those
of you who are here because you are curious about what that means, it means:
10100or, in other words, a 1 followed by a hundred zeros. The term google plex means:
10googleor a 1 followed by a google zeros.
Although both google and google plex are righteously enormous numbers, you need to do better than that in order to win the how big a number can you write on the back of an envelope contest (whose rules do allow you to use clever schemes, as long as you can explain them on the back of that same envelope). Here is a competitive entry:
If you take a counting number, N, and draw a triangle around it, you should take that to mean:
NNthat is, N multiplied by itself N times. So 10 with a triangle around it is ten billion. But if you put a square around a number, N, take that to mean N with N concentric triangles around it. Now consider that 10 with just 2 triangles is already a 1 followed by one hundred billion zeros. Three triangles is already getting too big to describe just by quoting the number of zeros that follow the 1. And I am asking you to put 10 triangles around it. But the insanity doesn't stop here. N with a pentagon around it is the same as N with N squares around it. Remember how colossal 10 with a square is? To add a second square is the same as putting that many triangles around a number that is already unimaginably huge. And that is just the second of the 10 squares that you need to make 10 with a pentagon.
And, or course, the rule continues to apply as you go to higher polygons. Each one means putting N of the previous polygon around N.
And you can still go even more insane. Let N with a circle around it mean N with N of the Nth polygons around it. Since the polygons start with three sides, 10 with a circle around it is 10 with 10 twelve-sided polygons around it. And what if you invented a notation that indicates N with N circles around it? Can you possibly go even more insane than that? Of course you can, but that is left as an exercise to the reader.
And to think, all this nonsense started because my visitor counter says "a google" to those who use a non-graphic browser, and the search engines snagged it. What started out as a joke has turned into psychosis. There's a lesson there somewhere, but I can't tell you what it is.
Riddle me this...
In my youth, my dad, as a return favor for all the questions I asked him,
would ask me deceptively simple questions aimed at challenging my mind.
Here are two that he hit me with when I was 7 or 8 years old. See how
well you can do at explaining these phenomena:
1) Why does the reflected image in a mirror reverse right and left, yet it does not reverse up and down?
2) Why, on any given block of the street, is there always one more house than there are spaces between the houses?
At first you feel the answers to these ought to be obvious, but are they?
Can you explain them without, in the end, appealing to "it just is," or
some other nonexplanation?
As always, if you feel adventurous, you can send your answer to either or
both of these to
hahn@netsrq.com
PKUNZIP
clicking hereIf you would like to operate PKUNZIP from Windows instead of DOS,
click here
click here
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