There are so many unusual, interesting, and new things you can find – if you just look around a little bit. And libraries are all about mysteries! So, we are looking at a real-life small mystery each week and bringing some library resources to help add some clarity and some thought.
Join us! Share with your library patrons! Start with our story, and build it for your own library! Or, just enjoy some small mysteries in your life.
This week’s mystery may not actually be small. And it’s been a mystery for a very long time. What is the story behind perfect numbers???
“With feats of artistry and athleticism, perfection lies in the eye of the beholder. But for numbers, perfection is mathematically defined. “Perfect numbers” are equal to the sum of their “proper” divisors (positive integers that divide a number evenly, not counting itself). For example, 6 = 3 + 2 + 1, and 28 = 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1. While these mathematical curiosities are about as likely to grace the walls of the Louvre as they are to perform a twisting layout back somersault, they do offer something irresistible: a perfect mystery.
Euclid laid out the basics of perfect numbers over 2,000 years ago, and he knew that the first four perfect numbers were 6, 28, 496 and 8,128. Since then, many more perfect numbers have been discovered. But, curiously, they’re all even. No one has been able to find an odd perfect number, and after thousands of years of unsuccessful searching, it might be tempting to conclude that odd perfect numbers don’t exist. But mathematicians haven’t been able to prove that either. How is it that we can know so much about even perfect numbers without being able to answer the simplest question about an odd one? And how are modern mathematicians trying to resolve this ancient question?”
“It may seem strange to spend thousands of years hunting for numbers with curious properties, proving theorems about objects that might not even exist, and inventing new and even stranger worlds of numbers to explore. But to a mathematician, it makes perfect sense.”
There is a lot of information in this article from Quanta magazine all about perfect numbers.
Whether or not you are interested in perfect numbers and in learning more about math, someone in your community is. Or – there is someone there who could be inspired to learn more about math, but maybe needs a little push. You can be that little push!
Share this mystery of math, and see what people can do to explore it. And, of course there are tons of interesting resources you can use to help patrons learn more about math, and to help build their math skills. Here are just a few you can use to get started:
- Math Playground
- Math Games
- Cool Math Games
- 70+ Awesome Websites for Teaching and Learning Math
- KidSites: Math
And there are a bunch of good books you can add to your collection.
- Everything You Need to Ace Math in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete Middle School Study Guide
- The Math Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
- Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality
- Math Without Numbers
- Math Refresher for Adults: The Perfect Solution (Mastering Essential Math Skills)
- A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)
- Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math
- Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
- Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World
Enjoy some mysteries in the world of math – and maybe use these resources to help solve some of the mysteries of math!