mastodon 4.7.3I'm the IT manager for the UVa Physics Department. I have a PhD in physics, and used to do research in nuclear physics. I teach introductory programming to undergrads. Also, flies are underrated.
The beavers have been busy in our creek! They've built four dams now, each of them a lovely bit of engineering.
The frogs are enjoying this growing wetland. There are thousands of tadpoles wriggling about. Possibly they're hatching from eggs inside the jelly-like blobs we see in the mud beside the creek?
A recently-emerged cicada, resting on a honeysuckle stem.
A tiny, tiny bluet flower with a tinier, tinier insect visiting it.
We went to a #NoKings rally today in the small town of Orange, in rural Virginia. My guess is that there were a couple of hundred people there. This is a red town in a red county, but the vast majority of the cars passing by were supportive.
These public displays are important in places like that. They show the protesters and the sympathetic people driving by that we're not alone.
When a driver showed disapproval I thought "There's only one of you. Look at all of us."
We went for a walk by the Rivanna on Sunday. There were many large patches of mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) along the shady trail. Most of the plants have a single broad leaf on an upright stalk, like a serrated umbrella, but occasional plants have two diverging umbrellas with a blossom emerging between them.
A poor little stilt bug who's lost one stilt, sitting on a garlic mustard blossom.
I've been playing around with making psychedelic visualizations of the Recaman sequence, using Alex Bellos' method (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGC5TdIiT9U). Here are the first 100 numbers in the sequence.
Starting with n_0=0, each n_i = n_i-1 - i, unless that would give a negative number OR a number that's already been seen. In those cases, n_i = n_i-1 + i. It's not known whether the sequence hits all positive integers eventually.
In the picture, semicircles show the jumps between successive numbers.
#math