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Check out this interview with Mark on L.A. I’m Yours in which he talks about Boing Boing, his interests, and how he got his start. [via The Fox is Black]

NEWS FROM THE FUTURE – ToDo.IT’s Kitchen Interfaces via Beyond the Beyond. Every thing with a touch screen.

By Glen Whitney for the Museum of Mathematics

MoMath colleague Dave Masunaga and I were chewing on some of the tasty macadamia nuts, while chewing on some interesting problems that may show up in the Museum of Mathematics this December, when we realized that the pleasant and unusual geometry of the packaging of these nuts provided excellent fodder for some spur-of-the moment mathematical makery. A couple packs of binder clips and not too many minutes later led to the first of this week’s offerings, the Siernutski Tetrahedron:

If only Dave had been hungrier when shopping and bought another box, we could have extended this to order three. But the conveniently flexible nature of the packaging does lead to a number of other interesting, dynamic structures, such as this ring of Tumbling Nutrahedra, which rotates about itself in the manner of a smoke ring:

(You can build a paper model of this structure using this template.)

Inspired by these constructions, a quick trip proved that the grocery store is a fertile hunting ground for the raw material for momathematical creations. For example, some octahedral cookie packs lent themselves to this Truncookied Cube. Note that all three flavors meet at every triangular opening, providing a pleasingly uniform mathematicogustatory experience:

However, this construction seemed as though it might be a bit dry — a situation quickly rectified by the introduction of antipodal pairs of six different flavors of tea, to produce the TruncaTea-ed Biscubottihedron:

Enterprising readers are invited to send images of their own grocery geometry — we’d love to see what you’re up to.

More:
See all of our Math Monday columns

And we’re back with our twenty-eighth installment of Your Comments. Here are our favorites from the past week, from Makezine, our Facebook page, and Twitter.

In response to My Week with the Chevy Volt, pkio3 says:

The EPA estimates that the Volt gets the equivalent of 93 miles per gal when in all electric mode. That’s taking the energy used to go a mile and a dividing by the estimated energy in a gallon of gas. I’ve been driving my Volt around Houston for 7 months now. Averaging 43 miles per charge. I’m using about 26KwH/100 miles. This is roughly the equivalent energy usage of driving a conventional gas burner that gets ~120Mpg. I drive mostly all electric and have gone 5400 miles on 5.2 gallons of gas. I’m still working on the original tank of gas that it came with. Luv my car.

In the piece on How to Carve a Stone Bowl, asciimation gives a gentle warning:

Nice project but be careful with the angle grinder! It should really have the guard fitted (in case the disc shatters or the tool kicks back) and you should wear gloves too. Also I’d be wary about putting too much sideways pressure on the disc when smoothing the bowl. If one of those discs shatters when spinning you do not want to be in the way of the shrapnel!

Angle grinder accidents can be really nasty. I still have a scar on the back of my wrist from years ago when I slipped with one and almost put a grinding disc through my hand!

In response to the Delorean Hovercraft piece, user ka1axy quips:

Roads?

Where we’re going, we don’t *need* roads!

In the piece on the Arduino Grande, zof says:

lol I love the made in burbank, so since the chip is already called a AT Mega, what do you call it now? AT Godzilla Mega?

On Twitter, Mark Frauenfelder heeds Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi’s warning:

Arduino co-founder Massimo Banzi: if your Arduino smells really bad, it’s a Chinese knockoff. #MakeHIW

Like these comments? Be sure to sound off in the comments! You could be in next week’s column.

Deborah Higdon’s lovely microscale train bookends also include fake Lego books to help support real ones. [via the Brothers Brick]