I Aten't Dead Yet

 I have been unwontedly silent for a bit, getting what is definitely going to be the last book ever  sorted. Currently called Fables, Fibs and Folklore: Tales My Mother Taught Me *, it is about all those things people believe and should not believe, like the cherished belief that before Columbus, people were scared of falling off the edge

It is a collection of essays is about ‘well-known facts’ which only the experts will tell you are untrue. Once, everybody believed the Moon was made of green cheese, they all knew that a full Moon led to mental instability, and we were unanimous about the canals on Mars. These days, there are probably few believers for any of those claims, but some of my American friends learned in school that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and had wooden teeth. They also remain absolutely convinced that southern hemisphere sinks and toilets drain in the opposite direction, because they have seen (faked) ‘demonstrations’ across the equator, done by showmen. All nations have myths like that…

All of those are false, but only the plugholes and teeth appear here, because the real dentures and drains involve interesting science. So I discuss those two items; the self-designated Lunatics who really met in Birmingham each full moon, and 144 other ‘well-known’ facts or beliefs before dismissing almost all of them. Some other points like the impossibility of Nero throwing Christians to the lions, or of Vikings wearing horned helmets, or of Julius Caesar being born by Caesarean section lack a place here because they aren’t as interesting enough. Instead, this is a refuting of the partial-history-of-147-mainly-wrong-ideas, which were all believed at some stage, although thanks to lazy journalists, dodgy authors, and poor teachers, some of them remain current. Where the truth goes down a rabbit-hole, I chase after it, dragging my readers along so we can share the scraps of truth that survive.

* but really should not have taught me.

Anyhow, here is a taste:

You cannot add one hundred numbers in 10 seconds

Yes you can, if they are the first hundred integers, and I will not tell you how it is done, but the solution is credited to Carl Friedrich Gauss, and the answer is 5050. These days, with the internet, that is all you need.

The class to whom I introduced this are probably already grandparents now, and I learned recently that some of them still recall the sneaky way I introduced this at the end of an entertaining maths lesson where I, as a science teacher, was covering an ‘extra’. These were Year 9s, and all teachers know how hard kids of that age are to set on fire, but I told them how, if they cubed a number between 100 and 200 on their calculator and gave me the value, I could give them the cube root.

I then showed them how the last digit of the cube gave me the last digit of the root, and left them to work out the ranges for each decade of roots. A few of them got this, and they were well warmed before I started, a calculated one minute before the bell, a tale about Gauss, a lazy teacher, and the sum of the first hundred integers. As planned, before I could spill the beans on Gauss’ solution, the bell went. It was now recess, and I told them I had to rush, as I was on playground duty.

They were hooked, and I headed out with a dozen boys and girls in close company, all wanting a solution. No, I told them, I was done with teaching maths for the day, but I would answer questions. By the end of the recess, they had elicited the solution from my sternly yes-and-no answers (with a couple of judicious hints), and when I said “Of course, Gauss never went on to add the first two hundred numbers, but he could have done…”, one girl immediately raised her hand (unnecessary in an informal chat, but she was on my wavelength) “The answer would be 20,100…”

I nodded, and several voices cried: “That’s 201 times 100”. The bell rang, and I beat a hasty retreat to the staff room. Perhaps I had made the way easier by telling them at the start about the bumble bee that could not fly, and then taking them through Zeno’s paradox (you will meet both of these in chapter 3, and then you will understand). Nothing is impossible: you just need to think: if nothing else that day, they got that idea.