The Length of a Flat Pancake and Good Pa... I have heard the phrase several times lately. “Flat as a pancake.” I started wondering just how big a really flat pancake would be. Most of the pancakes I’ve seen lately seem to be about 6 inches in diameter and about ¾ inches think. Here’s a view of the pancake with measurements. ...

Just How Many Single Word Palindromes ar... Sometimes, when you come upon something, don’t you wonder just how many of those things there are. You find 4 dimes in the wash machine and you wonder how many more might be in the tub. You see two people at Target with a Dion* CD in their cart and you wonder how many more people are in Target who...

Addendum to Tag Theory... Not too long ago I posted an article I titled “Tag Theory.” It dealt primarily with how to properly align sheets on a mattress. I made the conjecture: All sheets are tagged in such a way that they align with the lower left corner of a mattress. Figure 1. Mathematicians don’t recognize “proof...

The Cosmology and Mathematics of Shorted... A couple of years ago I bought a Tommy Bahama coverlet (a bedspread) for my queen-sized bed. It’s a regular queen-sized bed like all other queen-sized beds. It does have an extra thick mattress on it, but thick mattresses are pretty common now. I know its common because most stores sell sheets that...

Patterns, Scales, Pythagoras, and Lead G... Thirty some years ago my brother taught me some basic chords on the guitar. He showed me the basic open chords, A, C, D, E, Am, Em, and the bar chord for F. Those chords served me pretty well for the next thirty years. I was able to play tunes with my friends (who also knew those chords) as well as make...

The Mamas and The Papas, Craps, and Ligh... Recently, after hearing the song, Got a Feelin’ by The Mamas and The Papas, I Googled The Mamas and The Papas to find out more about them. About 1.5 million hits came up. I selected Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article gave lots of information and I enjoyed learning about the members of the band and...

Six Degrees of Separation with a Too Coo... Recently my good friend Guy told me a story that got me thinking about the concept of six degrees of separation. The six degrees of separation concept is that everyone in the world is linked to everyone else in the world by only a chain of about six people. The concept originates from the 1967 “Small...

Staten Island Mall Mathematics... My home page is Yahoo.com. As it came up this morning, I saw under the “Featured” headline news, the title “Mall Uses Humiliation to Deter Shoplifters.” I had to check this out. I click on the link and a video comes up that shows the inside of a mall in Staten Island, NY. A camera pans around...