Surprise from a Home Run

Do any of you like baseball? Although I am not a lover of sports, I still want to tell you a mathematical story, starting from a home run.

In 1974, Henry Aaron got his 715th home run. This broke the record 40 years ago, which was created by Babe Ruth. From that day, everyone in America were talking about it for a few months. Yes, it is ‘714 vs 715’.

Everyone were crazy about it, even mathematicians. A professor called Carl Pomerance thought about what is special about this two numbers. Because of his habit, he factorise their product and found something interesting: 714*715=2*3*5*7*11*13*17, which is equal to the product of the first seven primes. He thought that, if P(k) is the product of the first k primes, is it common that it equals to the product of two consecutive numbers. He used a computer to calculate this, and only found 5 examples where k<3050: 1*2, 2*3, 5*6, 14*15, and 714*715. That means if there exists another example, the two numbers should be greater than 10^6021. Therefore, he created a conjecture that 714*715 is the last example. Until now, it is not proved. You may try if you have time.

By the way, after he found this, he asked another professor about this. That professor asked the question in class and a student called Jeremy Jordan found another surprise: The two numbers share the same prime factors sum. Now, it is called Ruth-Aaron pair.

After that, Carl Pomerance, Carol Nelson and David Penney wrote an essay about it and it was published in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics. They suggested that Ruth-Aaron pairs have density 0 in all natural numbers. A few days later, they received a letter from Paul Erdos. He said that it could be proved and wanted to meet them. After their meeting, it changed Pomerance’s mathematical life. He published 20 essays with Paul Erdos later on.

In 1995, Paul Erdos and Henry Aaron got honour degrees in the same university. Pomerance met them and introduced one another. He also asked them to sign their names on the same baseball. That makes Henry Aaron’s Erdos number 1. Pomerance stores this baseball in a glass box until today. However, the signs are already invisible due to fading of ink.

How to Celebrate Pi Day

Do you know what is special about 14/3? It's pi day! It is started by a physicist named Larry Shaw, who is called 'prince of pi' nowadays. Its purpose is to celebrate this irrational number which is one of the most important numbers in the universe. Here are some ways to celebrate pi day:

Before pi day:
1. Prepare pi related shirts or accessories to wear on pi day, such as shirts with pictures of the symbol of pi, bracelets which have numbers on it, and necklaces with pi shaped stuff on it.

2. Prepare posters and banners about pi to decorate your room.

For schools:
​Maths:
1. Have a contest to see how many digits on pi a contestant can recite. The winner can get a delicious pie.
​2. Measure the circumference and the diameter of a circular object, such as a pizza. Then divide it up.
3. Have a treasure hunt of pi and the clues will be about pi.
4. Do a project about the importance of pi and facts about pi.

Art:
1. Create a pi chain. Pick 10 different colours for 10 different digits which represent digits.
2. Create a painting of pi. Each person gets a quarter and decorates it. Then put it all together to form a beautiful painting.
​Cooking: Bake pies shaped like pi or pie pops. Have a pie baking contest and the winner with receive a pie.

IT: Create a short film about pi to share your experience with pi. Make it 3:14.

Language(With letters): Have a contest to see how many words started with ‘pi’ a contestant can write down. The winner can get a delicious pie.

Literature:
1. Share books or stories about pi. I recommend ‘Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi’ for younger children, with few words and lots of pictures.
2. Create piems(poems in Pilish) or stories in Pilish. You can also find books in Pilish such as ‘Not A Wake’ and share together.

Music: Conduct a pi symphony. Use different musical instruments to play it together.

PE:
1.Have a pi day workout as follows:
3:Jumping jacks, mountain climbers and squat jumps. 1:Rest.
4:Lunges, push-ups, squats and sit-ups. 1:Rest.
5:Do every exercise 5 times. 9:Repeat these exercises 9 times every workout.
2:Do this workout twice a day. 6:Do it six times a week.
​2. Have a hula hoop contest to see who can dance the longest. The winner can get a pie.
3. Have a relay to pi. Every time they move from one station to another, they need to answer a question about pi.

​Science: Pie day is also Einstein’s birthday. Search information about him and other scientists related to pie day.

Others:
1. Hold a pi cheering competition to see which class can cheer with pi loudly.
2. Let students form the symbol of pi and take a photo of it.

For personal celebrations:
1. Eat a pie in the afternoon or a pineapple pizza at night.
2. Listen to music related to pi, such as ‘American Pie’, ‘Honey Bunch’ and ‘Sugar Pie’.
3. Play ‘Simon says pi’ with your friends. Let one friend call out numbers of pi and have the next person repeat and add one more digit and so on. The winner is the Pi master.
​4. Share jokes about pi and see whose jokes are the funniest.
5. Create pi day thank you cards and give them to the people you like.
​6. Have a pi cosplay to show your creativity.
7. Design a 'piper' plate with digits of pi on it. Or design a bracelet to embrace your ‘piness’.
8. Find your pi day and share it with your friends.
9. Watch the 1998 Darren Aronofsky movie, Pi.

These are the best ideas I can share with you for pi day. Happy Pi Day!

Resources:
25 facts of pi: https://www.piday.org/pi-facts/
Find your pi day: http://www.mypiday.com/index.html
​Google pi day: https://pi.delivery/
​How to write in Pilish: http://www.cadaeic.net/pilish.htm
19 jokes about pi: https://www.piday.org/jokes/
Other resources about pi: https://www.piday.org/
Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi: https://issuu.com/renaudj/docs/sir_cumference_and_the_dragon_of_pi

P.S.If you forget to celebrate on March 14th, don’t worry! You can either celebrate tau day on June 28th or pi day on July 22nd.

The Adventure of the Legendary Sword

I used to come to this island often with the ship and my teammates. In the ship, some people had lots of treasures and experiences. However, I didn’t know most of the members. I didn’t even remember the rules of sailing and how to be a successful adventurer at that time.

We used to came here every month but I didn’t know why at first. Every time we came here, the leader would look at the map, point to the trees and ask us to take our digging tools. Then we walked around the island and headed into the forest. Every time we went back to our ship we left nothing but tree limbs and a lot of holes.

I once asked my only friend there, ‘Do you know why we come here?’ He thought for a while. Then he shook his head, said nothing, and stared at his telescope again. I became more curious about the mystery from that on, and I would sometimes stop fixing the ship and thought about it. Maybe there was some treasure on the island. Or the leader might want to see someone important. Another reason I thought was there were some rituals and he wanted to catch them, but who knows? I thought about it until the leader stared at me furiously. I stopped my thinking and went back to work.

Until one day I knew the reason.

That day the leader was sick and my friend took the job of being the leader temporarily. He leads us to the same island and we started working again. Suddenly, a group of people ran towards us. They wore black hats and each of them had a knife. They ordered us to give them the treasure.

‘Treasure? We don’t know if there is any treasure!’ we replied.

They took an axe and chopped down one of the trees.  The fallen tree limb suddenly transformed into a gleaming sword. When they were trying to take the sword, I had an idea to stop them. I took a rope and tied it on their captain’s right foot. I pulled the rope and the captain fell. When they were in a panic, we successfully took the sword, tied the pirates up and sent them back to our ship.

When the leader saw us with the sword, he told us that we went to the island is because of the treasure - the legendary sword. The leader gave us a lot of rewards, including giving me a ship and the legendary sword.

Now I am a great adventurer, with my adventure team and ship. We travel a lot and we are one of the best adventure teams in the world. Although I am successful, I still remember my old teammates, and now we are good friends.

And here is my story.

My Book Report-The Future of Genetics

This book is about genetics, which is the study of heredity. It has four chapters, introducing the origin of biology in the 21st century, the perceptions of Science, the study and the future of post-genome era.

The first chapter is about how scientists developed concepts of biology, such as cells and DNA. At first, people thought that animals are fully formed from the mind of a creator until Darwin and Wallace introduced the idea of diversity of life. Also, they found out that species adapts natural environment and it can take place at any stage of development.

In the second chapter, the writer introduces the effects of genetics, such as on politics and literature. For example a writer called Mary Shelley wrote a novel called Frankenstein, which is about a creation from dead by a young scientist. It is a tale teaches us that humans may push their power over nature one day. When Darwin introduced the theory of evolution, most people disagree with it and debates were conducted on courts. Some people even teased the evolutionists. Genetics is also used to produce better plants and medicines from animals.

The third chapter told us about different technology used in genetics. To monitor the activities on the genome, scientists use ways such as DNA microarrays, tiling arrays and mass spectrometry. They also have a will to predict how the genotypes affect the phenotypes, therefore they are developing technology to match DNA to species, predict features and diseases, and reconstructing ancient species’ features.

The last chapter made us think about the future of humanity. Now, scientists have already found some genes which can extend our lifespan. And in 30 years time, personalised medicine and gene therapy will be the treatment of most diseases. However, it may cause overpopulation which lead to disaster. At the same time, the large food supply and water pollution makes many species become endangered. Therefore, we should protect the environment and support population planning to prevent disasters.

This book is about the biology discipline of Science. I have learnt about biological engineering, evolution and genetics after I read the book.

When I was reading this book, some questions, including:

1.Is the idea of natural selection fully correct?

2.Does stopping criminals to reproduce help reducing crime numbers?

came to my mind. I need to read online newspapers to answer them. For the first question, an article from the Guardian said that there are some problems in the theory. Some scientists did an experiment. They put some chickens in a stressful environment and it caused their ability to find food in a maze decreased. Then they put their offspring in a non stressful environment. Surprisingly, the offspring’s ability of finding food in a maze did not increase. This proved that some species may not adapt to the environment. For the second question, there are no websites related so I can not answer.

I used to think that animals cannot reproduce until becoming an adult, but after I read this book, I found out that a kind of salamander retains its larval form in its whole life and can reproduce without being an adult.

I think this book has a rich content because it provides detailed information about genetics. I would recommend this book to my friends because this is related to our Science textbooks and it will make your eyes wide opened.