Turning Peas Into Stars

Mike Duvos mpd at netcom.com
Wed Nov 27 15:30:37 PST 1996


In sci.math, David Madore <madore at clipper.ens.fr> writes:

 > Fanciful but true statement: it is possible to cut a pea in a
 > finite number of pieces, and rearrange them so as to make a ball
 > the size of the sun (leaving no holes, of course).

Nothing to do with crypto, of course, but at least it has something
to do with math. 

Does anyone remember Martin Gardner's April Fool's Day "Mathematical
Games" column in Sci Am in which he proposed the Banach-Tarski Paradox
as a practical method of turning a solid gold sphere into two solid
gold spheres each identical to the original?

A nice illustration of why all sets can't be measurable. 

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd at netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $









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