I’ve been a bit incommunicado lately. Nothing bad has happened! I’m not working harder than normal! I don’t know why but I haven’t been moved to post anything. And you know my feeling about blogging — it can’t be a chore, so don’t force it.

That being said, I wanted to share something we’ve been diverted by in multivariable calculus recently:

I gotta say, I love this class and I love working with these kids. They remind me how when you find the right thing, exploration is captivating.

This is the “book overhang problem.” The question we dealt with was: can you stack books at the edge of a table so that the top book is off the table completely (meaning if you’re looking down on the stack of the books, the top book doesn’t lie over the table at all)?

We haven’t yet found the optimal solution, but we’re going to be discussing our musings on Friday — what the best 3, 4, and 5 book configuration might be, and if we can generalize it.