|
Illustrated by Philip Reeve
|
Vicious Circles and other Savage Shapes
Suitable for ages 10 upwards
This is probably the only maths book you'll ever read that
has ABSOLUTELY NO SUMS!
But there's plenty of other stuff to keep maths fans happy...
- What ancient drawings lie in the secret Murderous Maths vault?
- Why don't triangles collapse?
- How does a Whispering Gallery work?
- How do you fold a pentagon?
- What sort of tricks can you play with circles?
- Who is finally brought to life after 2,500 years and put on trial
for giving us all centuries of mathematical misery?
All the answers are here, as well as a duel between Urgum and Grizelda, diabolical
challenges from Professor Fiendish, academic punch ups between the Pure
Mathematicians and a panic when Dolly Snowlips
"cooks" Porky Boccelli a birthday treat.
Don't forget to click the EXTRA
links for more details that we didn't have room for in the book!
CONTENTS:
The Secret Vault
An invitation to see our treasured ancient Greek sand doodles which demonstrate
the basics of shape or "geometry" as it used to be called.
Locus, Focus and a bit of Hocus Pocus
After we've learnt how to confuse teachers with a bit of Latin, we pick up some
skills with compasses and rulers - and then help Veronica avoid an unwanted snog and
get a naked colonel safely from the sea into his beach hut.
Everything Worth Knowing About Triangles
A packed chapter showing how a triangle could help Pongo McWhiffy stop Veronica fall
into a cowpat and why milking stools have three legs. A particularily smelly
Professor Fiendish has a particularily diabolical challenge, the gangsters find out how to
divide up all sorts of strange shaped cakes without fighting
- but the punches fly anyway as the Pure Mathematicians discuss where the centre of a
triangle really is.
EXTRA - The Bear Hunter Puzzle with more answers than you'll find in the book!
Polygons
Not only do we learn how to draw different polygons, we also learn how to fold them and
then throw a party to celebrate!
We discover why bees are better builders than us and how to impress an alien waitress, and
we prove to a judge the rules about polygon angles. We also find out what makes a Gollark
laugh and see how to make the two "Penrose Tiles" which produce patterns that
evolve into infinity!
EXTRA - The Amazing Penrose Chickens
EXTRA - How to calculate the formula for any regular polygon
EXTRA - The British Origami site has everything and is
especially good for beginners.
EXTRA - The Origami.com site shows you how to fold hundreds of paper models
including elephants!
EXTRA - Find out about David Mitchell's amazing models and origami books at
Origami Heaven
Vicious Circles
It's amazing what you find when you play around with a couple of circles
and a few straight lines! A visit to the Foul City of Fastbuck ends in crawling over
a tank of twitching tongues and once again we dazzle the judge with some nifty proofs.
Finally we go right back in time to see why Udd the caveman's super turbo charged
six geared car doesn't impress the ladies!
EXTRA - The Names of Bits of a Circle
EXTRA - The Alternate Segment Theorem
EXTRA - How to find the Centre of a Circle using this book
Lumps and Bumps
Meet the five regular solids - and find out how the ancient Greek Plato tried to explain
how the world was made out of them.
See how Riverboat Lil manages to beat Brett Shuffler at snakes and ladders with a very
sneaky die and find your way around the octahedral planet Ptuon.
There's also instructions for building a "superstar" - but since the book came out, an MM reader called
STEVEN CHARLTON told us its proper name is a "small stellated dodecahedron". Thanks Steven!
EXTRA - The Regular Solids - and how to work out their volumes!
EXTRA - How to make The Magical Self-Assembling Cube!
EXTRA - The 11 different cube nets.
Ellipses, Whispers and Wandering Stars
A Pure Mathematician gets rather squashed as he asks "is an ellipse
just a squashed circle?" We meet ellipses of all sorts ranging from the all round sensible
ones to the raving eccentric bing-bong-whoopee type. Whether it's in a cathedral dome,
or a planetary orbit, we see why ellipses are not egg-shaped and how ellipses
save the planet from yet another evil Gollark plan.
EXTRA - How to work out the Area of an Ellipse and the volumes of ELLIPSOIDS!
Prove it Pytho
He had it coming. 25 centuries ago Pythagoras lumbered us with his "theorem" about the
square on the hypotenuse - so we bring him to life, shove him in front of the judge and make
him explain himself. (This is all illustrated with about 6 pages of superb cartoon strips
by Philip Reeve.) But then the big problem is that now he's alive,
what do we do with him?
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Rob Eastaway, Liz Meenan and
David Mitchell
who supplied some ideas for this book.
By the way - Dan White from Leeds was the first person EVER to discover Professor
Fiendish's first name by escaping from the Room of Doom. Dan's prize is that he appears
somewhere in this book! Can you find him?
AND FINALLY: Here's something that was supposed to go in the book
but we didn't have room for...
LINKS:
The Murderous Maths Bookshop
The Murderous Maths Books
Murderous Maths Main Index Page
 |
This book is dedicated to Merlin |
