Crocheting higher math

Today’s bit of incredible coolness comes to you courtesy of my friend Jessie. She is, alas, too cool to have a blog or webpage, but not too cool to point out neat things to me. If only all my former students were this cool, I say

She alerted me last night to this important paper, which deals with the subject of how one can physically make a hyperbolic surface. It turns out that it is very difficult to do this using traditional techniques such as with strips of paper and glue, and while this may not be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity at the moment, it is certainly a bit of a pain if you’re trying to show someone what a hyperbolic surface looks like.
Enter the miraculous crochet hook. Because it turns out that not only can you crochet a hyperbolic surface but that this is in fact probably the best way to make a sturdy and usable such surface. Now I happen to think this is really cool. This article is an interview with the authors of the other paper (who happen to both be from Cornell, incidentally) and it includes some nice color pictures of the crocheted surfaces.

So there you have it. They’re pretty time-consuming to make, though, since the number of stitches in each row increases exponentially as you move outwards (what with them being hyperbolic and whatnot), so I don’t know if I really want to suggest it to Beth. But if you’re looking for something moderately pointless to do, I think it’s a great project

This discovery, is, without a shadow of a doubt, probably the single most important mathematical occurrence in the last hundred years. And yes, that statement qualifies as hyperbole. But that’s sort of the point, you see? :sigh: Apparently that pun was too subtle for some people.