From Me to You

I know a young woman and her husband who spent a year living with her parents before starting grad school. The young couple loved watching things grow. However, they were in the middle of the desert—not exactly prime gardening land. One of the few plants they managed to cultivate was a cluster of native poppies. Their hearts were happy when a few orange blossoms unfolded under the early summer sun. It was something beautiful, even if it was something small. That fall, the woman and her husband moved away. Winter came, and then spring arrived. When the woman’s parents started getting their backyard ready for gardening, they noticed half a dozen plants growing. They were poppies! The seeds from the original small flowers had scattered and grown. Before too long, a row of cheerful orange flowers lined the porch area, glistening smooth and bright against the desert sky. Even though the young woman and her husband had moved away, what they had left behind had multiplied into an eve

I was watching a detective show the other night when I heard a familiar phrase. "Can you triangulate that call?" Any Law & Order  fan knows that when a signal—like from a cell phone—bounces off three towers, an accurate location can be established. Thinking about that piqued my interest about triangles in general, and since I'm nerdy like that, I started reading more about them. It turns out that triangles are awesome! They're super strong. According to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center , to change a triangle's shape, an edge must collapse. But edges can be fortified, making the triangle able to hold large loads. They are ideal building blocks. But here's the crazy thing—triangles are simple, too. In fact, they're the simplest polygon. According to the University of Cambridge Wild Maths program , a common way to approach a tricky problem, like analyzing a complex surface, is by approximating it with these simple triangles. Accuracy. Strength.