As usual you’ve inspired me. I’ve thought for a long time we need somewhere to crowd-source some inspirational bits of media to work with like this. You do a stunning job of churning out quality materials for everyone. If only we could get more people finding and sharing images and videos.

So in comes Pinterest. I knew there had to be a good use for it and this seems like a match made in heaven.

I hope some of your readers will agree and share pics and videos here: http://pinterest.com/danielstucke/mathematics-inspiration/

Cheers,

Dan

What intrigues me is that we have these images that appear to be to scale (but are not). I would be pleased if at least a student or two wanted to measure the images as this is a very practical & logical thing to do. If they do measure the images, this problem becomes quite, dare I say it, perplexing.

The ratio of the images of the shadow lengths and the heights are 2 to 1, but the ratio of the actual shadows & heights is 1.6 to 1. Are they going to believe the actual measurements you give them? How are you going to get them to understand the discrepancy between the image ratios and the actual ratios? I think you would need images from other angles to have a chance of convincing them the actual ratio is not 2 to 1. I don’t see the payoff being high enough to go outside for this, but one advantage is they would believe the actual measurements.

Also, the ratio of the images of Dan, the pole, and the woman is 1 : 1 : 0.4, compared to the actual ratio of 1 : 2.1 : .9. The camera shrinks the pole & the woman more than it shrinks Dan. You could estimate some of the scale factors in the picture. Say the woman is 5.5 ft & Dan is 6 ft, and the images are 0.5 inches & 1.25 inches. The scale in the picture is 5.5/0.5 = 11 ft/inch for the woman & 6/1.25 = 4.8 for Dan. The scale for the pole in the picture should be somewhere between 11 ft/inch & 4.8 ft/inch very roughly.