Welcome to this week’s Math Munch!

Girls’ Angle is a math club for girls. Since 2007 it has helped girls to grow their love of math through classes, events, mentorship, and a vibrant mathematical community. Girls’ Angle is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but its ideas and resources reach around the world through the amazing power of the internet. (And don’t you worry, gentlemen—there’s plenty for you to enjoy on the site as well.)

Amazingly, the site contains an archive of every issue of Girls’ Angle Bulletin, a wonderful bimonthly journal to “foster and nurture girls’ interest in mathematics.” In their most recent issue, you’ll find an interview with mathematician Karen E. Smith, along with several articles and puzzles about balance points of shapes.

There’s so much to dig into at Girls’ Angle! In addition to the Bulletins, there are two pages of mathematical videos. The first page shares a host of videos of women in mathematics sharing a piece of math that excited them when they were young. The most recent one is by Bridget Tenner, who shares about Pick’s Theorem. The second page includes several videos produced by Girls’ Angle, including this one called “Summer Vacation”.

Girls’ Angle can even help you buy a math book that you’d like, if you can’t afford it. For so many reasons, I hope you’ll find some time to explore the Girls’ Angle site over your summer break. (And while you’ve got your explorer’s hat on, maybe you’ll tour around Math Munch, too!)

I did a Google search recently for “regular tilings.” I needed a few quick pictures of the usual triangle, square, and hexagon tilings for a presentation I was making. As I scrolled along, this image jumped out at me:

What is that?! It certainly is a tiling, and all the tiles are the “same”—even if they are different sizes. Neat!

Clicking on the image, I found myself transported to a page all about spiral tilings at the Geometry Junkyard. The site is a whole heap of geometrical odds and ends—and a place that I’ve stumbled across many times over the years. Here are a few places to get started. I’m sure you’ll enjoy poking around the site to find some favorite “junk” of your own.

Spirals

Circles & spheres

Coloring

Last up this week, you may have seen this coin puzzle before. Can you make the triangle point downwards by moving just three pennies?

There are lots of variants of this puzzle. You can find some in an online puzzle game called Coins. In the game you have to make arrangements of coins, but the twist is that you can only move a coin to a spot where would it touch at least two other coins. I’m enjoying playing Coins—give it a try!

I solved this Coins puzzle in four moves. Can you? Can you do better?

That’s it for this week’s Math Munch. Bon appetit!