Origami Dodecahedra - Greg Egan

Origami Dodecahedra

There is a nice photograph of some interlocking origami dodecahedra created by Dirk Eisner on the website Mathematical Origami. But it’s hard to be sure how many dodecahedra the whole model contains, since some are hidden from view. This raises a puzzle: assuming the configuration is as symmetrical as possible, how many dodecahedra are there? Here you see Greg Egan’s answer to this puzzle—and to a much more challenging puzzle.

Grace-Danielsson Inequality - Antony Milne

Grace–Danielsson Inequality

When can you fit a tetrahedron between two nested spheres? Suppose the radius of the large sphere is $R$ and the radius of the small one is $r$. Suppose the distance between their centers is $d$. Then you can fit a tetrahedron between these spheres if and only if the Grace–Danielsson inequality $ d^2 \le (R + r)(R – 3r) $ holds. This was independently proved by Grace in 1917 and Danielsson in 1949. But Antony Milne has found a new proof of this inequality using quantum information theory!