Finding 3-color mapped solutions to the 6x10 pentomino puzzle There are exactly 12 planar shapes that can be formed by connecting 5 squares edge to edge with no overlap. These shapes were made famous by mathematician Solomon Golomb in 1953 who coined the term pentomino, provided mathematical and visual descriptions of the 12 pieces, and offered some games and puzzles using the set. A common puzzle challenge is to use all 12 pentominoes to tile a rectangle with no gaps or overlap. The set of 12 pentominoes contains 12 x 5 = 60 squares, and indeed one popular puzzle is to fit them into a ..read more

I saw my first mirascope upon my initial visit to the Exploratorium when I was eight. I can still recall my astonishment. The exhibit entices you to pick up an illuminated spring, about four centimeters high and two centimeters in diameter— yet when you reached out to touch it, the spring is simply just not there! This was some serious physics magic! Sometimes mistaken for a hologram; this image is not produced using a LASER and the physics of interference and diffraction, but instead produced only by mirrors and reflection. Here is a demonstration of a mirascope: V ..read more

Special offer for @physicsfun followers: free worldwide shipping The craftsmanship of this product is superb- the best kinetic sculpture of its kind available- and only $98.00 US. @GeelongShopcom has kindly offered to share a special coupon code with all of my Instagram followers. The code given below will provide free worldwide shipping on any purchases of The Swinging Sticks Desktop Toy version from their website: From GeelongShop.com: The Swinging Sticks Desktop Toy Use this Coupon code: FUNSHIPPING The Physics: Made famous when featured on the desk of Pepper Potts in Iron Man II, this s ..read more

Welcome to my orphaned blog! I hope to resume occasional posts in the coming months. Since October of 2013 I have been posting about 5 IG posts per week as a means of showcasing my collection of physics toys and other enigmatic objects of science. My posts are primarily videos since that format allows the fullest exploration of the kind of phenomena exhibited by the objects I collect. My initial goal was to post a more detailed blog entry here for each one of my IG posts, but I underestimated the time it takes in composing these blog entries and found it challenging to do better than what can ..read more