Thursday, January 4, 2007

I Choo-Choo-Choose you

Check out this nifty article about math, trains and kids. But mostly math, little trains and almost no kids. Essentially, if you add a few forked pieces to a train track, the number of possible patterns begins to balloon arithmatically.

As a child, Scott and I regularly combined our HO scale train set with a huge plastic dinosaur playset we had. The train would routinely zip up the hill past the coal bins, through the Jurassic caves, barrel over the T Rex before usually derailing and hitting the Pizza Hut. I wouldnt' say it was the reason we both can do calculus today but WHO KNOWS???

1 comment:

Scott Robichaud said...

I'd like to think the desire for calculus stemmed from the complex bike ramps we built, and then you throwing green peppers against my head and whipping me with a rubber snake.

-s