Let loose and have some fun with infinity with help from this post by Matt Parker at Boing Boing:
Making and doing things infinitely can get a bit tricky, but we’ll give it a go. Find yourself a box and a lot of balls and number the balls, starting 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . You get the picture. The game is to put the balls in the box one at a time, starting with ball number 1, but, whenever you put in a square-number ball, you take out its square root and put it away in a drawer or somewhere safe. This means that the first move is a bit odd, because when you put in ball 1, 1 is its own square root, so you take it straight back out. Then you can put in balls 2 and 3. When ball 4 goes in, you take ball 2 back out and put it in the drawer. Then balls 5 through to 8 go in, before adding ball 9 and taking out ball 3. The question is: if you simply keep doing this, which balls will end up in the box? How many are safe in the drawer?
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
