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Category: Art • Weirdness
Posted on: January 11, 2007 9:45 AM, by PZ Myers
This is hard to do:
Now there are some unanswered questions. Can he scale it? Does it have to be on a vertical surface? Can he find the center? Can he draw a square with the same area?
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Comments
Time Cube guy says he can.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | January 11, 2007 10:05 AM
I'm a big fan of the regular pentagon inscribed inside a circle using only an unmarked straightedge and compass, myself.
Posted by: Evolving Squid | January 11, 2007 10:10 AM
I'm voting spoof!
Posted by: Matt | January 11, 2007 10:11 AM
Wow! TimeCube guy has the answer!
...if the question is "What would the website of a schizophrenic look like?"
Posted by: Sonja | January 11, 2007 10:14 AM
They way he built up the tension was pretty good, but it seems spoofy to me.
This is the kind of the thing that the wingnutosphere are good at debunking. Send it to LGF and Buttrocket. It will keep them out of trouble for awhile.
Posted by: John Emerson | January 11, 2007 10:16 AM
I think he did it. That was awesome. He essentially made his arm a compass and just rotated his arm really well.
Posted by: Steve_C | January 11, 2007 10:29 AM
When I was at Michigan Tech (Houghton) in the late 70's, a physics professor did this regularly as part of the lecture, no fuss or build-up.
Posted by: Ruth | January 11, 2007 10:36 AM
I've seen a number of engineers and architects who can draw perfect circles and straight lines freehand. It mostly requires practice.
I'm an expert at freehand drawing of mangled sort-of-quasi-ellipsoid-roundish-shapes-that-have-to-pass-for-circles
Posted by: Evolving Squid | January 11, 2007 10:40 AM
Pah! I'm peeved they didn't attempt any sort of verification or measurement. What would really have been interesting would be seeing how close to a circle it actually was, using something more precise than eyeballing.
Posted by: Morgan | January 11, 2007 10:45 AM
I recall seeing a prof at MIT doing this in the late 70s, as well as some students trying to emulate him. While it is impressive to see, it seems to me similar to feats of very accurate throwing, catching, hitting etc, not to mention leaping and spinning (that are unattainable for me personally, but evidently possible for some humans).
(I wonder how much more difficult it is to do with a whiteboard marker.)
Posted by: Theo Bromine | January 11, 2007 10:48 AM
Once I saw a professor do the same trick with two hands. He first drew a half-circle with his right hand. Then, without slowing down, he took over the chalk with his left hand and completed the perfect-looking circle.
Posted by: C.W. | January 11, 2007 10:56 AM
Now THAT was cool.
Posted by: beepbeepitsme | January 11, 2007 11:01 AM
Time Cube guy must know what he's talking about; he won a Nobel Prize!
Posted by: False Prophet | January 11, 2007 11:14 AM
Kids in Waldorf schools are regularly taught how to do this. I can't do it, but apparently once you know the trick it's no big deal.
Posted by: Becca | January 11, 2007 11:17 AM
My high school math teacher was really good at this too. He used his forearm as the radius instead of his whole arm though, so he had to smudge the bottom of the circle a bit since a whole circle would entail some bones breaking...
Posted by: cnmyers | January 11, 2007 11:23 AM
Giotto (1267-1337)
Vasari tells the story of how Pope Boniface VIII sent a messenger to Giotto with a request for samples of his work. Giotto dipped his brush in red and with one continuous stroke painted a perfect circle. He then assured the messenger that the worth of this sample would be recognized. When the pope saw it, he "instantly perceived that Giotto surpassed all other painters of his time."
Do you suppose that this teacher has the talents of Giotto?
Posted by: AnthonyK | January 11, 2007 11:37 AM
My highschool math teacher, Mr. Wood, could do it as well. He'd plant his elbow in the middle of the blackboard to start, and the last little bit usually went off on a tangent, but it was pretty close.
Posted by: James | January 11, 2007 11:38 AM
Good ol' Mr. Norton, my high school Physics teacher, was able to do the same thing. He was held in awe by his students and in addition to being a master circle-maker, he was a terrific teacher.
Posted by: Richard | January 11, 2007 12:18 PM
OK, will you guys tell me what ->really
Let's just say, (tm from another list) it took me two bleeping years to get our IT Nazis to unblock links to my own papers on diagnosis of breast cancer.
fusilier
James 2:24
Posted by: fusilier | January 11, 2007 12:40 PM
Bleah - sorry for not previewing. Minor unfunny joke about getting blocked at work by "Websense."
fusilier
James 2:24
Posted by: fusilier | January 11, 2007 12:48 PM
My dad had a math prof that could do this as well - he would start off the lecture by drawing a huge circle on the board, and then use it to illustrate whatever he was teaching that day. Since it all worked out, the circle must have been close enough to perfect.
Posted by: adam | January 11, 2007 1:41 PM
All the perfect-circle-drawers I've ever seen have roughly the same technique: They stand side-on to the blackboard, or sometimes even face obliquely away from it, drawing behind their backs without looking at the board.
Just thought I'd offer this as a data point; I've not studied the phenomenon.
Posted by: wjv | January 11, 2007 2:23 PM
I too would have liked a verification. It could have been crappy resolution, but the bottom of the circle looked like it stuck out a little.
Timecube! This guy's hilarious! It would of course be Time Square... because a cube is one of those evil objects that follow stoopid Euclidean Geometry!
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | January 11, 2007 2:38 PM
For those of you not in the know, "squaring the circle" is one of the big 3 classic problems of ancient Greece. That is, mathematicians from way back made attempts at creating a square with the same area as a cirle. However, it has been shown that using straight edge and compass, it is impossible. That Pi is sure hard length to construct.
Also for you curious types, the other two problems are tri-secting an arbitrary angle, and doubling a cubes volume. (All three are impossible...)
Posted by: DouglasG | January 11, 2007 2:58 PM
Let the floodgates of the angle trisection theories be opened, now that someone's mentioned it, heh...
It's bloody hard drawing a circle on the board. Once you know the trick (which, as many have surmised, involves using your shoulder or elbow as a pivot), you need to convince your arm to relax enough to pivot about that point. This *is* a skill the circle-drawer has in common with a good artist.
It's only very slightly harder on a white board, because of the shape of the marker tip. It scales pretty well, but there's a minimum convenient size; but small ones are pretty easy to fake.
Oh, and yes, the bottom looks a little funny. They usually do, for anatomical reasons. This guy's pretty good at minimizing that, though, and I'm impressed by his ability to make his line meet itself so precisely.
Posted by: lytefoot | January 11, 2007 10:40 PM
I went to a Waldorf high school and yes we did draw many circles (as well as sit in quit a few), but never practiced such an arbitrary talent. Still I have little doubt that a few of my teachers did work on it, but I have never seen it done that well (my high school teachers would have envy)! Yet, of course, it is not perfect- but it is a seeming VERY symmetrical circle and I can think of no reason to believe that it can't be done with a bit of practice like many other talents. But come on, what is our criterion for "perfect"? This is impressive non-the-less!
Posted by: Jack Murphy | January 12, 2007 3:14 AM
Woah, did anyone else have something try to install when they clicked the link? I think it called itself scansafe but I didn't hang about to double check that.
Posted by: coracle | January 12, 2007 5:25 AM