{"id":3271,"date":"2014-09-29T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T04:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=3271"},"modified":"2014-09-29T22:06:01","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T04:06:01","slug":"numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2014\/09\/29\/numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I played a video<\/a> for them. They were sitting in their desks and standing in the back of the room and sitting on the floor in the front.<\/p>\n

It was a time lapse video of the northern lights. I played it to show them the wheeling stars and beauty of a cold winterscape and to watch the dancing auroral lights. I played it to talk about numbers.<\/p>\n

The music played. Ribbons of green danced in northern skies.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a geologist,\u201d I said, \u201cyou could use numbers to explain why those mountains in the distance are flat.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a meteorologist,\u201d I said, \u201cyou could use numbers to explain why those clouds are shaped like that.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were an air traffic controller,\u201d I said just after a time-lapse jet streak flashed, \u201cyou would use numbers to explain why that jet was following that particular path.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were an astronomer, you could use numbers to explain why the stars seem to be turning in circles in the sky.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a botanist, you could use numbers to show why those pine trees still have their needles but those other trees have dropped their leaves.”<\/p>\n

We talked about a lot of things that morning. We only had an hour or so, but we covered a lot of ground. I told them that I was there to talk about why numbers are such a big part of our lives, whether we\u2019re scientists or engineers or artists or musicians or politicians.<\/p>\n

And I told them I\u2019d be back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Friday I\u2019m going back. We\u2019ll be timing our heartbeats.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I played a video for them. They were sitting in their desks and standing in the back of the room and sitting on the floor in the front. It was a time lapse video of the northern lights. I played it to show them the wheeling stars and beauty of a cold winterscape and to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[113,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3272,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions\/3272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}