Princeton Science Library

Inspiring popular video games like Tetris while contributing to the study of combinotorial geometry and tiling theory, polyominoes have continued to spark interest ever since their inventor, Solomon Golomb, introduced them to puzzle enthusiasts several decades ago. In this fully revised and expanded edition of his landmark book, the author takes a new generation of readers on a mathematical journey into the world of polyominoes, incorporoting the most important recent developments. Deceptively simple, polyominoes are a collection of squares joined together along their edges. But how many different polyominoes can you make with 5 squares, 6 squares, n squares? If you have a set of pentominoes (shapes consisting of five squares) could you cover a rectangle with them? What would happen if you had cubes instead of squares? Could you pack a box with them? Posing problems and giving answers along the way, Golomb invites the reader to play with these mathematical structures and develop on understanding of their extraordinary properties. In this new edition, he addresses, for example, the properties of octominoes and enneominoes and the problem of how to cover a donut with polyominoes. An extensive bibliography has been included to guide the reader to other interesting mathematical conundrums and to more advanced mathematical theories of polyominoes. For professional mathematicians and amateurs seeking further challenge, the author offers a host of new problems that remain to be solved.

Het verslag van een zeldzame confrontatie tussen twee kosmologische kopstukken. De twee eminente Britse natuurkundigen Stephen Hawking en Roger Penrose hebben een tegengestelde visie op de toekomst van het heelal, hoewel beide proberen de algemene relativiteitstheorie te verenigen met de kwantummechanica. In dit boek komt naar voren hoezeer hun standpunten over het uiteindelijke lot van het heelal botsen, en hoe zij op verschillende wijze proberen het onbegrijpelijke proberen te begrijpen.

The interest earned on a bank account, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, and the shape of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis are all intimately connected with the mysterious number e. In this informal and engaging history, Eli Maor portrays the curious characters and the elegant mathematics that lie behind the number. Designed for a reader with only a modest mathematical background, this biography brings out the central importance of e to mathematics and illuminates a golden era in the age of science.

A paleontologist gives an account of episodes of mass extinction from the geological past, offers his own theory, and presents a pessimistic forecast for the future of Earth and its inhabitants.