Conformal mappings are great: it's a very powerful branch of mathematics, which basically says you can deform almost any 2D object and transform it into something else while keeping the shape of objects the same (on a small scale). Hence this picture: you see no holes, no obvious distortion, but this image cannot be real. This trick is inspired by a painting by M.C. Escher: some Dutch mathematicians have found what the transformation is and explained in (almost) layman terms.
This image was done in The Gimp and transformed with MathMap.
Friday, July 7, 2006
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