The Code (Episode 2) - a quick review

The Code, this week, focussed upon geometry and Symmetry (A topic that I've been immersed in recently in the Group Theory section of my OU Maths course).
In a one-hour breakneck speed journey it covered how the shapes in honeycombs, the Giant's Causeway, salt crystals and soap bubbles can be explained by mathematics. It also linked the works of Jackson Pollock and the mathematics of fractal patterns (Benoit Mandlebrot) and the animation techniques used by Pixar studios
to model real world objects like mountains, trees and waterfalls.
The latter was a good example of how maths is a bit of a two headed beast that flips almost seamlessly from the algebraic to the geometric and back again.

The bubble example was also used later on to explain how engineers designed the curved roofs of the Olympiastadion in Munich in the 70s without the advantage of modern day computing power using soap bubbles and strings (and, of course, maths!).




On a personal level, I think that this was a better episode than the first. I especially liked how the transition to the example of X-ray Crystallography showing how the structure of crystals relates to the arrangement at the atomic level. We also saw a virus particles icosahedron structure (A Platonic solid - introduced earlier in the programme using dice that would be familiar to any Dungeon & Dragons roleplayer) again with the goal of efficiency driving the shape of natural objects.

Next week's show is about Prediction. The Codes web-site has the following summary: "Professor du Sautoy's odyssey starts with the lunar eclipse - once thought supernatural, now routinely predicted through the power of the code. But more intriguing is what the code can say about our future.
Along the path to enlightenment, Marcus overturns the lemming's suicidal reputation, avoids being crushed to death, reveals how to catch a serial killer and discovers that the answer to life the universe and everything isn't 42 after all - it's 1.15.".