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Lab Books to delight your eyes & your mind! |
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Archimedes'
Lab Newsletter
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Some
News and Announcements
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 THANKS to
all our puzzle fans who still support and encourage our
educational activities! Here is the latest news concerning
our puzzle web site and our activities...
Grazie a
tutti coloro che ci sostengono nella nostra azione didattica!
Ecco qualche novità dal nostro sito...
Un
grand merci à tous ceux qui nous
soutiennent dans notre action de diffusion du savoir!
Voici en bref quelques nouvelles de notre site...
Yours,
Gianni
and Marie-Jo
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new?
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| Click like to
become our fan on Facebook and get updates about
Archimedes' contests, features and other cool
stuff! |
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 A
new interesting feature called 'Pencil
Games' has been added for pencil puzzle
lovers all over the world! Where the visitor
can work out path puzzles, Sudokus, mosaic and
geometric puzzles...
 Go
to Pencil games page...
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 Representations
of skulls in art are legion,
from Hans
Holbein's distorted death's head in his painting ‘The
Ambassadors’ to Andy
Warhol’s paintings of screen-printed
skulls in gory black and white and overlaid with
different colors. Skulls have also their place
in optical illusions...
Go
to Macabre optical illusion page...
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 Abracada-Brain
puzzles
develop your zen mind, your logical thinking and
imagination skills with original intuitive paradoxical
twisters and puzzles, and intriguing 'koans'!
Go
to Abracada-Brain puzzle page...
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 Chess
players will appreciate this new entry... The
problem is to find a tour of a knight on particular
chessboards. Only valid moves of a knight are
allowed and every square of the board must be
visited exactly once!
Go
to Knigh'ts Tour puzzle page...
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 Our
ancestors knew all about optical illusions, even
if they didn’t always recognize the cerebral
mechanisms that created them... A place where
to discover some interesting early visual illusions!
Go
to Vintage Illusions page...
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 How
to focus attention? Give a desire to participate?
Encourage creative exploration? ...We've updated
and extended our Workshop page featuring interactive
educational proposals for museums and institutions.
Go
to Workshops page...
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 A
new gallery has been added to our optical illusion
section. Puzzling visual illusions for everyone:
beginners and experts as well... Each month,
new images are being added but the old ones are
archived into a large database.
Go
to New Optical Illusion gallery...
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 We've
redesigned and updated our Tangram puzzle section.
The challenge of the Tangram lies in the ability
to arrange 7 pieces into a variety of shapes...
Who really invented the Tangram? What is the
Chinese name for Tangram puzzle? More than 5
pages full of original puzzle ideas, activities
and figures to match. It worths a visit!
Go
to Tangram Puzzle pages...
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 The
Shadoks are kind of outer-space bird-like creatures
designed and created by Jacques Rouxel in the
late sixties... The Shadoks live on the shadok
planet where everything is going wrong, and
their efforts to escape to Earth are constantly
foiled by rivals from another planet. They
speak a special language called "gabuzome".
Actually, it is composed of only four syllables: ga, bu, zo, me (pr.:
gah, büh, zoh, möh)...
Go
to crazy Shadok world...
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 A
metaphorical encyclopedia of our world, a visionary
tale of mankind, or an hallucinatory journey
through our fears? No, just a diverting and
surrealist book written in a florid script,
entirely invented and completely illegible,
and illustrated with watercolor paintings representing
strange objects and scenes.
Go
to Codex Seraphinianus...
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 Our
calendar features 12 exciting optical illusions.
Each month brings a dazzling visual discovery
to experiment with...
Go
to 2004 Wall Calendar...
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 Most
observers will say the Moon looks bigger when
it is close to the horizon, and smaller when
it is higher in the sky. But is this true?
Is the Moon like an inflatable balloon? Sometimes,
looks can be deceiving...
Go
to Moon Illusion...
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 Texts
in original language of early puzzle authors
for you to download: Peano, Alberti, Alcuin
of York, Da Vinci, etc.
Opere in lingua originale
di autori di giochi matematici antichi e non...
Go
to Puzzle Classics...
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 Did
you know that 'Magicicada' life cycles are
always of 13 or 17 years?
That the Romans, too, could transcribe unit
fractions? That
the name Pontius
(Pilatus),
in early Italic language means “the 5th”?
These pages are full of number facts, both
mathematical and cultural, tantalising problems
and anecdotes...
Go
to Encyclopedy of Numbers...
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 A
new "old" puzzle to solve online.
The "15 Puzzle" consists of 15 squares
numbered from 1 to 15 which are placed in a
4x4 box leaving one position out of the 16
empty. The goal is to reposition the squares
from a given arbitrary starting arrangement
by sliding them one at a time into the configuration
shown above (for some initial arrangements,
this rearrangement is possible, but for others,
it is not).
Go
to 15 Slide Puzzle page...
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 We
have updated our Month's puzzle page and
have added a few new features:
1) a math Quiz;
2) a new section: Wunderkammer,
a collection of puzzling facts concerning the
world of sciences, language and history...
3) and an incredible loquacious Robot (called Guigui
the A'Bot) you can chat with for hours!
Go
to Puzzle of the Month page...
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 What's
a Droodle? A droodle is a
doodle riddle, i.e. a combination of a doodle
and a riddle... Droodles were known for centuries
but were popularized by Roger Price in the
1950s. These cartoons were rather abstract
drawings of a few lines accompanied by an implicit
question: "What is it?". A punch
line (usually a funny description) made the
cartoons obvious.
Go
to Droodles page...
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 In
this new page a typical packing problem is
presented. A set of blocks completely fills
a given space, but nevertheless, an extra piece
can be added! Magic?
You can make your own Paradoxopiped puzzle
just by following the short instructions shown
on the page. Enjoy!
Go
to Paradoxopiped page...
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 A
new page featuring 3 perpetual calendars:
1) a javascript perpetual calendar,
2) perpetual calendar tables,
3) Zeller's formula that allows you to calculate
a day of the week for any date.
The javascript calendar and the tables are copyright
free and you may download them for your web pages.
Go
to Perpetual Calendars page...
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 We
have updated the pages featuring kinetic
illusions.
You will find there new images and an original
article on the rotoreliefs - optical
discs created by Marcel Duchamp - which produce
the illusion of motion in perspective.
There are a lot of good ideas for exploring the
world of optical illusions!
Go
to Kinetic Illusions page...
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 The color
test featured in this page is designed
to give a quick assessment of color vision.
The results of the test may be interesting but
are not to be considered a valid medical test
for color deficiency and merely serve to illustrate
the tests available. The original card version
of this test was invented by Dr Shinobu Ishihara.
Go
to Color Test page...
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 We
expanded the Moiré patterns page
with new original images and drawings you can
download for your web pages (but please credit
us, a link back would also be appreciated!).
In short, moiré is interference that can
be seen when overlaying similar patterns. Just
as the fine hairs of the Angora caused patterns,
geometric patterns such as Circles, Parallel
and Radial Lines, or Points also do.
Go
to Moiré Patterns page...
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Coming
soon... |
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 A
new feature: "Unsophisticated Science
Lab" will enrich Archimedes' Lab
site soon... These new creative and hands-on
activities will stimulate the neurons of our
puzzle fans; to know more about this new topic
keep visiting us! |
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| MATEMAGICA blackline
masters for making over 25 funny math puzzles! A collection
of incredible puzzles and optical illusions with easy-to-follow
instructions (in Italian). Ideal for math
workshops. |
| More
info... |
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ARCHIMEDES is
an interactive review devoted to entertaining and involving
its readers with puzzles, recreational mathematics
and visual creativity.
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| More
info... |
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| Impossible
Folding Puzzles & Other Math Paradoxes is
filled with superb, colorful puzzles, all designed
and drawn up by Archimedes Lab, the Italian puzzle
and illusion creator. Do all problems have solutions?
Is complexity synonymous with difficulty? This
original collection of mathematical puzzles and
paradoxes proves that things aren't always what
they seem! Readers will discover that nothing is
as easy or as difficult as it looks and that puzzles
can have one, several, or no solutions. |
| More
info... |
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