A Problem Squared

What's the most cunning way to move furniture on your own?

Thoughtful ideas for Christmas presents

Answers to the riddle of Pudding's Wheel, including a brilliant piece of maths by a listener.

Recipe for microwave fudge:
3 cups of milk or dark chocolate bits (roughly 500g)
1 tin condensed milk
1/4 cup of butter
Step 1. Microwave all ingredients for 3-5mins, stopping to stir occasionally.
Step 2. Grease or line a deep tray/dish with baking paper and pour in the mix.
Step 3. Refrigerate.
Step 4. Once firm, cut into squares.
(Note from Bec: in Step 2, I like to dust the baking paper with cacao powder and then dust the squares again once cut in Step 4. It helps stop them from immediately melting back into each other. You can also add nuts and dried fruit or spices if you want to get experimental. Make sure you store this in the fridge whenever possible, as it has a low melting point!)

Pudding's instagram: instagram.com/hamsterpud

How long is a year of A Problem Squared podcasts?

What's the qualification for a room being a room?

Is the famous Ferrero Rocher advert mathematically possible?

You can visit the Crafts Council campaign here: https://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/support-us/appeals-and-projects/lets-craft-packs-children

Delve into luxury with the original Ferrero Rocher ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-nZZkQqTc

The best-known packings of equal circles in a circle http://hydra.nat.uni-magdeburg.de/packing/cci/d1.html

Correction: Bec's episode of Jonathan Ross's Comedy Club aired on 19th September (Series 1 Episode 2)

To celebrate 12 episodes we're collecting some data! If you can, fill in the listener survey: http://thatsurvey.ilikeit.aproblemsquared.com

Here's the wikipedia page we used to make sense of shark teeth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_tooth#/media/File:How_to_count_shark_teeth.png

The Weaire-Phelan structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaire%E2%80%93Phelan_structure

What a truncated octahedron looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncated_octahedron

And a spinning one!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Truncatedoctahedron.gif
MATT'S CALCULATIONS
A 140mm × 60mm × 46mm block of cheese has a volume of 386.4 cm^3 and a surface area of 352 cm^2. To give a 41% reduction the original needs to have the same volume of cheese but an area of 596.6 cm^2.
Matt assumed there are 4,200,000 current infections and each person has 400,000 virus particles per mL across 2L of fluid. If the SARS-CoV-2 particle has a diameter of 150nm and stacks like spheres with 74% efficiency: those 3,360,000,000,000,000 current virus particles would fill only 8mL, aka "about a teaspoon".

How can you keep cool when there's no air conditioning?

What's the best thing to do with a spare room? (If you're lucky enough to have one, that is.)

How much would the Big Macadamia Nut be worth if it was an actual nut?

Why are typewriters mysterious?

Matt's long-awaited topography video, inspired by a problem in the show, is here at last! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtKhbbcc1Rc

You can see the typewriter patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US207559A/en

And for Bec's 5KTS t-shirt, head here: www.bechillcomedian.com/5kts/square

In this month's episode, Matt investigates what is the optimal way to share biscuits amongst a group, and Bec explores how you can elongate your holiday time using all manner of creative methods.

Plus updates on short shorts and how much Coronavirus is there in the world.

Send your problems at www.aproblemsquared.com

And here's the study Matt referenced about perceptions of Time: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001295