Morse Code
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louise
— — .-. … . / -.-. — -.. . / .. … / -.-. — — .-..!
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardised sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph.
Imagine how long it would have taken to send a blog back on May 24th 1884 when Samuel F. B. Morse dispatched the first telegraphic message over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore.
Well, see how long it takes to simply send the 42 words if you had to hear about Morse Code on the day it was invented below.
Listen to the introduction (42 words) of this story here
Fun fact: if you were to send the entire Harry Potter series of books using Morse Code it would take 54,2081 hours or just over six years!
If you want to hear what your name or business would sound like in Morse Code you can! Create your own Morse Code for your messaging or just for fun by using this free online translator here
How we see the World - Size IS everything.
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louise
When you imagine a map of the world what do you see?
Most of us are familiar with one very common design created over 500 years ago and is the work of Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer (mapmaker). His most famous work, the Mercator projection, is a geographical chart where the spherical globe is flattened into a two-dimensional map, with latitude and longitude lines drawn in a straight grid. This is why Antarctica appears so wide across the bottom!
But did you know that a lot of countries are not as big or small as they look on a typical world map? Don’t believe me? Check out some great examples from Geospatial World here.
Dealing with a full deck of atoms.
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Did you know there are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than there are atoms on Earth?
It seems unbelievable, but there are somewhere in the range of 8×1067 ways to sort a deck of cards. That’s an 8 followed by 67 zeros. To put that in perspective, even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to find a repeat.
This is the nature of probabilities with such great numbers. Though a long-time blackjack dealer might feel like they have shuffled thousands of cards in their lifetime, against a number this big, their rearrangements are irrelevant.
There are simply too many ways to arrange 52 cards for any randomly organised set of cards to have repeated itself.
Holding the Universe in the palm of your hand
This literally exciting calculation is denoted by an exclamation mark and is called a factorial. As a rule, factorials multiply the number of things in a set by consecutively smaller numbers until 1. Since there are 4 cards in our mini-deck, there are 4 factorial or 4! numbers of ways it can be arranged, which equals 24. While this might not seem like a particularly large number, by the time you get to 52! (or 52x51x50 … ) you get a number with 68 total digits – an integer much larger than all the atoms estimated to be on Earth. Your can explore more about this concept and other resources from the team at Mcgill Univesity here.
You are going to go and find a pack of cards now aren’t you?
If this fact has triggered your mind to think about your next card game then here is an interesting fact that you can surprise and delight your friends and family with; not all shuffling techniques are created equal. The most popular/common method can take up to 10,000 complete shuffles to create a truly random order, while one technique can do this in just seven. Watch Professor Persi Diaconis of Standford Univesity explain why.
15 signs of true intelligence
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louise
What makes someone intelligent? How do we know it when we see or experience it?
There is a lot of debate on how we measure this or experience it in our daily lives. Howard Gardners’ concept says that we each belong to one of eight ‘types’ of intelligence. If you want to take a short and simple survey to see where you fit you can find out here.
Gardner’s theory has come under criticism from both psychologists and educators. These critics argue that Gardner’s definition of intelligence is too broad and that his eight different “intelligences” simply represent talents, personality traits, and abilities.
Despite this, the theory of multiple intelligences enjoys considerable popularity with educators. Many teachers utilize multiple intelligences in their teaching philosophies and work to integrate Gardner’s theory into the classroom
BUT…
The most interesting theories that have evolved in modern psychology discuss the idea of “15 Signs of intelligence you can’t fake”. Most of us would be lucky to have three or four of these. Do you know anyone who has all 15?
At Adjacent Communications we know a certain individual who does. And if you want to put them to the test and see if this claim is true, contact us here (link to communications/messaging centre)
See more great videos like this one from the team at TopThink here.
