Articles
The Abakcus team shares their best articles to read on topics like mathematics, science, creativity, productivity and more. Ready to dive in? You can use the categories below to browse some of the best articles.
Abakcus is the collection of perfect articles about mathematics and science.
Mathematics and Sudokus
Copy the below 9×9 grid and complete it so that each row, each column, and each 3×3 box with a wide margin contains each of the numbers 1 to 9…
Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School?
New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire. Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger…
How Our 1,000-Year-Old Math Curriculum Cheats America’s Kids?
Imagine you had to take an art class in which you were taught how to paint a fence or a wall, but you were never shown the paintings of the…
What Does Randomness Look Like?
On 13 June 1944, a week after the allied invasion of Normandy, a loud buzzing sound rattled through the skies of battle-worn London. The source of the sound was a…
How to Photograph a Meteor Shower?
Taking photographs of a meteor shower can be an exercise in patience as meteors streak across the sky quickly and unannounced, but with these tips – and some good fortune…
The Complex Geometry of Islamic Design
In Islamic culture, geometry is everywhere. You can find it in mosques, madrasas, palaces and private homes. This tradition began in the 8th century CE during the early history of…
The Man Who Fell From Space: Felix Baumgartner
Sage advice can be gleaned indirectly from the words of men who’ve done amazing things. In this interview series by Jim Clash called “The Right Stuff,” we share nuggets of…
How a 19th Century Math Genius Carl Friedrich Gauss Taught Us the Best Way to Hold a Pizza Slice?
We’ve all been there. You pick up a slice of pizza and you’re about to take a bite, but it flops over and dangles limply from your fingers instead. The crust…
Everything Worth Knowing About The Periodic Table
Learn all about the 118 combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up our world. Whether hung on classroom walls, put up in dorm rooms or screen-printed on T-shirts,…
How To Easily Remember the Unit Circle
I work in a walk-in tutor lab at my university, and one of the other tutors showed me this a couple of years back and changed my life. First, you make…
Could We Create Dark Matter?
85% of the matter in our universe is a mystery. We don’t know what it’s made of, which is why we call it dark matter. But we know it’s out…
Living in Alan Turing’s Future
More than a decade has passed since the British government issued an apology to the mathematician Alan Turing. “On behalf of . . . all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work,”…
The Cicada’s Love Affair With Prime Numbers
As far back as the seventeen-hundreds, fur trappers for the Hudson’s Bay Company noted that while in some years they would collect an enormous number of Canadian lynx pelts, in…
Math of the Penguins
Animals have evolved to protect against the cold in myriad ways. Whales insulate with blubber. Bison congregate near geothermal springs. Black bears shelter in caves. And emperor penguins, facing Antarctica’s…
How a Brand of Chalk Achieved Cult Status Among Mathematicians?
Some call it the Rolls Royce of chalk, the Steinway of writing utensils. Some say it’s unbreakable, others say it leaves no dust behind. And it turned the world’s brightest…
What’s Everything Made of?
Long before philosophy and physics split into separate career paths, the natural philosophers of Ancient Greece speculated about the basic components from which all else is made. Plato entertained a…
What is Group Theory
In math, a group is a particular collection of elements. That might be a set of integers, the face of a Rubik’s cube–which we’ll simplify to a 2×2 square for…
The Singular Mind of Terry Tao
At age 10, Tao became the youngest person in history to win a medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has since won many other prizes, including a MacArthur ‘‘genius’’…
5-Year-Olds Can Learn Calculus
Why playing with algebraic and calculus concepts—rather than doing arithmetic drills—may be a better way to introduce children to math?
Geometrical Kinetic Tarts
These tarts were made for the new issue of SoGood Magazine. This work is the result of collaboration with José Margulis, an artist from Miami, USA who works with Geometric abstractionism and…
Roads to Rome
At least for Europe it is obvious: all roads lead to Rome! You can reach the eternal city on almost 500,000 routes from all across the continent. Which road would…
Choosing the Right Seat: Musical Chairs
One of the most complex social situations you will encounter is the 45 seconds that elapse while deciding where to sit for dinner at a restaurant. Your choice should appear…
How Gödel’s Proof Works?
IN 1931, THE Austrian logician Kurt Gödel pulled off arguably one of the most stunning intellectual achievements in history. Mathematicians of the era sought a solid foundation for mathematics: a set…
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