011 = Massive Halls and Ambassadors' Balls

09/30/20 • 48 min

1 Listener

A Problem Squared

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)

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)

Previous Episode

010 = Heat Fighting and Typewriting

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

Next Episode

012 = Series of Teeth and Queries of Cheese

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

Does this cheese look like it has 41% less packaging? https://www.dropbox.com/s/kuj16lmkgrx8w7i/41cheese.jpeg?dl=0

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".