Originating from Germany, there’s a beautiful tradition counting down the days and raising the excitement towards Christmas. As a full-service replacement holiday, the Newton Days of course also need to tap into this pool of joy and thus presents the Newton Days Calendar. Starting on December -eiπ, we count the days to 24.12. Newton’s Eve. But it’s not just the first numbers who remind us of the great constants that hold our life together, for the calendar also contains 3 QR codes. – Each of the codes leading to a surprise on that day only.
OK, great. But how do I know which door to open when?
To celebrate science, we’ve replaced some numbers with nature constants and little math questions. If you like solving the puzzle yourself, don’t read on. If you like to know what each of the constants mean and why they’re there, do read on!
- eiπ+1 = 0 is what’s called “Euler’s identity” and is among many mathematicians seen as the most beautiful of all mathematical formulas. Reorder the numbers and you’ll see that -eiπ = 1, so that’s where we start.
- Φ0 is the Magnetic Fluxquantum, it’s 2.067833848…×10−15 – so ignoring the order of magnitude, this is almost 2. But why is it important? Mostly so we can show you how amazing super-conductivity is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GY4m022tgo
- π is this crazy number that shows up all over nature. Why? Because it relates the diameter of a circle to its circumference. Every March 14 (3/14, pi-day), mathematicians get crazy and build all sorts of ways of calculating pi. Check-it out from one of our favourite math youtubers, stand-up math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKl1B8y4qXw
- 22 = 2*2 = 4
- 5 – QR code! 🙂 It’s a surprise!
- NA is the Avogadro Constant. And it connects the the world of atoms, with our everyday world. Atoms are tiny! like mindboggingly super tiny. So how to handle them on an everyday basis? That’s where the mol comes in. If you use say – carbon atoms, they contain 6 protons, 6 neutrons and 6 electrons. Now electrons are even tinier, so they almost don’t contribute to the weight of an element. Now the Avogadro constant lets you transform the weight of single atoms into grams. So if you have 12g of carbon, you just divide that by the Avogadro-number and you know how many atoms are in those 12g of carbon. By the way, the number is 6.02214076×1023 – so again ignoring the order of magnitude that’s almost a 6!
- Up next: α, R and 121^0.5 – come back after 6.12. to learn what they mean!