math!! and other fun things

lately i've been more excited about math, because i've been finding ways to get other people excited about math, and when other people get excited about math, then i get even *more* excited about math. there are several topics that have been especially fun lately.

one is finding the area under a curve. i put someone through the agony of finding approximations by adding up rectangles, and then by adding up an infinite number of rectangles, and then i taught them the fundamental theorem of calculus. =)

and it's pretty great to prove things with people and watch them see how it works for the first time--like the product rule and power rule and quotient rule for derivatives.

and then there are the people who want to know *why* when a line is tangent to a circle, that line is perpendicular to the radius. we didn't formally prove it, but convinced each other because of the symmetry of the circle--the diameter cuts the circle in half, and the tangent touches the diameter, so the angles on either side must be the same because of symmetry.

and then there are people who i thought didn't really like math and even who would have in the past been put in the category of someone who is not necessarily good at math but now who are just thrilled to calculate and figure out things about 3D objects.

and then there are the people who think they are cheating when they find out about heron's formula for triangular area (where you can find the area of a triangle by only using the lengths of the three sides--no need to know the height of the triangle) and use that instead of some other way of finding the area of a triangle.

math is so fun!!

but also rock band. i'm learning all these 80s songs because of rock band, and it's pretty great. also, if i could play the bass guitar for real, that would be fun. i've always wished i could sing the bass line in choirs, that i could play the cello, or a bass guitar. rock band is the closest i've come. but actually i prefer to play the guitar in rock band.

and then there are lolcats. ohhh lolcats. i suppose i could write a whole post about lolcats another time. i read them everyday and they make me happy. lately they have been posting gifs as well and they are hilarious... 5 second or less little clips of cats doing cat things (they also post video clips, but i don't watch those). and then the lolcats themselves, pictures of cats (although sometimes pictures of other things too) with captions, which sometimes relate to just funny things that cats do, but other times relate to other nerd-like things. =) here are two recent ones that made me smile.

if you've never seen lolcats before, you might be thinking, "whaaat?...." =)
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