Project 7.1

Historical Question In the Boston Museum of Fine arts is a display of carefully made stone cubes found in the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro of the Indus. The stones are a set of weights that exhibit the binary pattern, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ... . The fundamental unit displayed is just a bit lighter than the ounce in the U.S. measurement system. The old European standard of 16 oz for 1 pound may be a relic of the same idea. Write a paper showing how a set of such stones can successfully be used to measure any reasonable given weight of more than one unit.

Project 7.2

Project 7.4

What solids occur in nature? Find examples of each of the five regular solids. For example, the skeletons of marine animals called radiolaria show each of these forms.



References:

David Bergamini, Mathematics (New York: Time, Inc., Life Science Library, 1963), Chapter 4.
Juithlynee Carson, "Fibonacci Numbers and Pineapple Phyllotaxy," Two-Year College Mathematics Journal, June 1978, pp. 132-136.
James Newman, The World of Mathematics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956). "Crystals and the Future of Physics," pp. 871-881, "On Being the Right Size," pp. 952-957, and "The Soap Bubble," pp. 891-900.


Radiolaria:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/radiolaria/rads.html