Plex My guess is that the method probably isn't all that interesting either. Rather than an elegant deduction, it was probably proved by means of exhaustion, using a computer to test every way of putting the squares together, and finding that none of the configurations fit within a 70x70 box.
A perfect squared square doesn't exist? Maybe you should let Matt Parker have a go at it! I don't think it will be perfect, but it will be at least something!
I know this question is one year old but I wanted to answer anyway. The fact is that the sum of all the squares sides going top to bottom must be constant (equal to the bigger square side). It means that this quantity is the same even though it's split among different squares, this is the same kind of behavior you find in circuits but also many other physical objects, because ultimately it's about conservation of something and we know how much physics loves conservation :)
James Grime came to my school a few weeks ago and when I told him I was going to be doing maths and physics at uni he said he didn't really like physics, so it's funny to see him talking about electrical circuits here
I love that you can easily conceive certain objects in mathematics, like that 70x70 square, that are just forbidden to exist. "So disappointing that it doesn't exist!". If he was talking about a unicorn, it wouldn't have had the same meaning. A unicorn could potentially exist somewhere in the future. Saying "unicorns don't exist" is like saying that "t-rexes don't exist". They don't exist in our immediate reality. That 70x70 squared square is impossible now, in the future and past, everywhere and forever. Yet we're capable of discussing the properties and qualities of this fundamentally impossible object.
It would only be ONE tiny part of Fermat’s last theorem relating to ONE tiny part of this mathematics. So no, not really, only a very small cross over.
In the University of Waterloo, they named a side road "William Tutte Way" after Bill Tutte, and they even put the 33 by 32 squared rectangle on the sign, and mentioned the Squared Squares
To really drive the electrical analogue home: If you imagine the rectangle ( 4:08 ) is built of a resistive material with the top and bottom edges connected to a battery with voltage equal to the height, then you are setting up a uniform unit electrical field with uniform current flowing across the whole area from top to bottom. Since there is no horizontal electric field, you can place wires along any horizontal and make any vertical cuts without affecting any current flows. Any square you cut out of the area will have the same resistance, no matter its size. With this in mind and without any change in electrical flow, a cut can be made at each vertical line, each horizontal line can have a wire with zero resistance laid over it, and each square can then be replaced with a unit resistor. Now you have exactly the same resistor network with the associated currents and voltages.
This is largely a (really well done) synopsis of one of the early Mathematical Games columns by Martin Gardner, in Scientific American (from 1959?). The very first of those columns (actually, an article, which then led the magazine to give Mr. Gardner a monthly column), in the Dec. 1956 issue, was about hexaflexagons. Those were invented & investigated by another group of four students, one of whom was the very same Arthur Stone of the squared square story. The other 3 were Bryant Tuckerman, John Tukey, and Richard Feynman - yes, that's right - the famous, Nobel-laureate-to-be, physicist!
Of late I've been finding myself deleting emails from this channel because the stuff was way over my haed and not interesting, but I saw that it was this young man, so I watched, and boy was I rewarded, what a fantastic set of videos from this chap, he certainly knows how to hold attention and make a great video!
This problem is kindof similar to the 'ways to overlap circles' problem in another numberphile video. They place a certain criterion on what is an allowed form and try to find the different forms that exist. And, it's tricky to come up with a way a searching through the possibilities.
This was seen in Scientific American in Gardner's column in the 1950s. Using the technique he showed I designed a garden path several metres long and two metres wide all squares being different. Never got around to making it.
How about a Squared Squared Square? Can you create a square out of these squares, without using more than one of the same square? You also can't have the squared squares being the same size as well. Well, I guess this would just be a bigger Squared square, then. :/
Interesting how Kirchoff's Law crops up in the most unique locations. It's one part that I've had the hardest time with when it comes to electrical theory.
Phil Mertens My initial response was "yes" based on the content of the video alone this seems almost implied. However I think the issue is to do with the rate of size increase for each successive cube making it much harder to fit them together geometrically. I'm doubtful that you could even build a rectangular prism out of cubes, though I'd like to be proven wrong on this since there's more to be learned from that
I don't really think so. Here is the Wikipedia page explaining why there can be no cubed cube: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squaring_the_square#Cubing_the_cube. However, the proof does use infinite descent, which was the same method that was used to prove Fermat's Last Theorem for certain powers.
Fermat's Last Theorem shows that there are no natural numbers x,y,z such that x^3 + y^3 = z^3 which does mean that you can't find two cubes whose volumes add together to give you the volume of a third cube, but that's all.
Squared squares (which are geometric constructions) are completely different from Parker squares (which are just matrices). A perfect squared square doesn't have duplicate subsquares, while imperfect squared squares do.
_"Or does it . . ."_ _"No it doesn't."_ Lol, he's been filming Numberphiles for years, and didn't catch on to the fact that when mathematicians open their mouths to utter the words "does not exist" it means it *really* does _not_ exist.
There cannot be a perfect cubed cube in dimension 3 or higher. We know that there is no perfect cubed cube. Suppose that there exist a perfect tesseracted tesseract, then each of its "sides", which are cubes, must also be perfectly cubed, which leads to a contradiction.
Hello, Numberphile. Some day, i have a question. And i cant find it out. Rubiks Cube. It has many of possible combinations. Them all can be solved by 20, and less turns. But question is: Is there a combination, that can solve cube from any combination? I'm a programmer, an i have wrote a programm, that count iterations of algorithm to get to start position. And i have found Easy one. RFL'B only 4 turns, but it takes 1680 turns to get back.
Yup, there is. It is called "Devil's algorithm" (analogy to the God's algorithm). There has been done some research on it, you can google it up. I don't think a specific algorithm has been found though (but I think it has been proven that such algorithm exists)
Algorithm is really possible. You can solve each combination, and write all moves, it will be huge algorithm, but it exists. But what the smallest one?.. For now, i'm trying to get it on simple twisty puzzle. Just get 6 circles, place them in grid 3*2, and it give you simple puzzle. It has only 360 possible combinations (!6 / 2) and Devil's algorithm, i think has 6 moves... But it not tested. I didn't write test for all algs program. It is next step.
You mean a sequence that when all steps are taken solves all startingpositions? Nope. But it is easy to make a sequence that, at one point or another, solves any starting position - but you would have to terminate it at the right step.
It is real. And prove is simple. You have decent amount of combinations. 43*10^19, i guess. So you can solve each combination in about 10 moves(average) So Devil's algorithm will take 43*10^20 moves. One big algorithm, witch will go from one combination to another. And, because of it cycles all possible combinations, it will solve cube in 100% But length, of this algorithm is realy realy big :D
Nave Tal Well, if you count a 1x1 square, then you could also count a 2x2 square, and a 3x3 square, etc. That's infinite squares, but all are trivial solutions.
Indeed. Trivial answers are the best ones! By the way, you said that there is no square made of the first 24 squares, but is there a sqare made of consecutive squares? Not necessarily starting from 1.
Are there solutions that can be constructed out of rectangles, and still be solved with Kirchhoff's Law? Or is there something special about the squares (other than that they are nice, and possibly unique)? I could imagine applying this method to a bunch of problems that rely on graph theory, but this would have to be generalizable to rectangles.
This kind of math could be quite useful in manufacturing. Such as cutting a single sheet of matterial into different sized squares without waitsing any. Even the imperfect ones if you want a ratio between the sizes.
I saw that sum of squares from 1 all the way to 24 on a John Baez video about string theory. Funny seeing it here as well, and it's a real shame that the squares can't be arranged into a squared square (makes for a nice pyramid, though).
"Or does it?"
"... no it doesn't."
Dreams crushed
probably too complicated
It was probably proved to be impossible.
I was hoping for a number file extra on that.
"Oh..."
Plex
My guess is that the method probably isn't all that interesting either. Rather than an elegant deduction, it was probably proved by means of exhaustion, using a computer to test every way of putting the squares together, and finding that none of the configurations fit within a 70x70 box.
Nice flash of the Parker Square over the imperfect square at 1:24
You're both right. There were two flashes, one at 1:24 (assuming we're taking the floor of the time) and another at 1:25
Ah, so that's what that is.
Caloom whats that?
Check out the Parker Square video on this channel. It's a bit of a joke on Matt Parker and his imperfect Magic Square
I was about to give a like but you have 1234 likes so I'll leave it at that.
*"Or does it?"*
*VSause music starts
"No."
*Music stops abruptly
Christopher Dibbs Funny you mention VSauce, right?
Wrong!
@@NStripleseven haha vsauce2
A perfect squared square doesn't exist? Maybe you should let Matt Parker have a go at it! I don't think it will be perfect, but it will be at least something!
Oh... I see what you are doing there...
I'm sure he'd use 2 pi in his 'proof'
and Chuck Norris has not started working on the problem yet
rosserobertolli a parker-squared parker square
@@cubethesquid3919 PI, NOT TAU!!!!!!
"Because they're nerds!"
Wise words from a wise man.
I fell out of my bed laughing at that line
Yes exacly becuase they're nerds!
OR DOES IT....
no it doesn't :p
No, it doesn't.
oh....
Hey Vsauce, Michael here.
Haha! Savage James..
So cold "no"
Brady's entire goal with this video was to troll Matt.
Why not call one version that comes close 'the Grime Square'?
729 likes... 27 squared...
@@rikwisselink-bijker True 😅👍🏻.
I like so much how Dr. Grime makes any topic clear and understandable. We want more Grime!
Yeah, i have same views..
*parker square joke*
spotted at 1:25 :3
Sagano96 1:24 for me. but still :D
Kurt Green best meme from Numberphile
Yep, went t post on the spot, you were first :)
As soon as he talked about reusing squares, I knew they had to mention the Parker Square.
I saw that Parker Square... senaky sneaky.
superstarjonesbros i got a screenshot.
Hehehehe
Who's Senaky Sneaky?
OrangeC7 Octotube!............. am I the only GDer here?
Senaky?
sneaky*
So, is there an explanation for why this seemingly unrelated geometry problem happens to share those properties with electrical circuits?
ya
I know this question is one year old but I wanted to answer anyway. The fact is that the sum of all the squares sides going top to bottom must be constant (equal to the bigger square side). It means that this quantity is the same even though it's split among different squares, this is the same kind of behavior you find in circuits but also many other physical objects, because ultimately it's about conservation of something and we know how much physics loves conservation :)
@@RiccardoPazzi great answer!
Because math is magical!
Geo-metry. Geo is earth. Back when the subject was invented, the earth was the whole universe.
James Grime came to my school a few weeks ago and when I told him I was going to be doing maths and physics at uni he said he didn't really like physics, so it's funny to see him talking about electrical circuits here
I love that you can easily conceive certain objects in mathematics, like that 70x70 square, that are just forbidden to exist. "So disappointing that it doesn't exist!". If he was talking about a unicorn, it wouldn't have had the same meaning. A unicorn could potentially exist somewhere in the future. Saying "unicorns don't exist" is like saying that "t-rexes don't exist". They don't exist in our immediate reality. That 70x70 squared square is impossible now, in the future and past, everywhere and forever. Yet we're capable of discussing the properties and qualities of this fundamentally impossible object.
jordantiste The fact that, unlike biology, chemistry or even physics, maths is always true whichever universe you live in is why people love maths.
I love how passionate he gets and how happy it all makes him
00:40
James: Why have they chosen this as the logo for their Society?
Brady: 'Cause they're nerds.
Answer like a boss!
That should have been the end of the video right there.
I'm Flat mic drop and walk out of the room
No cubed cubes - related to Fermat's Last Theorem?
AtomicShrimp this should have way more likes
@@captainsnake8515 Sure, but please explain what is Fermat's Last Theorum?
@@theranger8668 i think it is a^x+b^x=c^x has no solutions if a,b,c,x>0 are integers and x>2
It would only be ONE tiny part of Fermat’s last theorem relating to ONE tiny part of this mathematics. So no, not really, only a very small cross over.
tiny part or not related still means related, and that was the question
In the University of Waterloo, they named a side road "William Tutte Way" after Bill Tutte, and they even put the 33 by 32 squared rectangle on the sign, and mentioned the Squared Squares
Thanks for the upload, I really love videos with Dr. Grime!
I really loved this one. I thought their solution methodology was really interesting with this problem.
One of the most fascinating videos from the past little bit! I really enjoyed this.
"Or does it!?...", "No, it doesn't".
Perfect encapsulation of a maths person's ability to squash enthusiasm. Haha...
To really drive the electrical analogue home: If you imagine the rectangle ( 4:08 ) is built of a resistive material with the top and bottom edges connected to a battery with voltage equal to the height, then you are setting up a uniform unit electrical field with uniform current flowing across the whole area from top to bottom. Since there is no horizontal electric field, you can place wires along any horizontal and make any vertical cuts without affecting any current flows. Any square you cut out of the area will have the same resistance, no matter its size. With this in mind and without any change in electrical flow, a cut can be made at each vertical line, each horizontal line can have a wire with zero resistance laid over it, and each square can then be replaced with a unit resistor. Now you have exactly the same resistor network with the associated currents and voltages.
"Cuz they are nerds!"
Hahaha, this made my day
It would be nice to see an episode about other math societies "logos." Many of them should be interesting.
This is largely a (really well done) synopsis of one of the early Mathematical Games columns by Martin Gardner, in Scientific American (from 1959?).
The very first of those columns (actually, an article, which then led the magazine to give Mr. Gardner a monthly column), in the Dec. 1956 issue, was about hexaflexagons. Those were invented & investigated by another group of four students, one of whom was the very same Arthur Stone of the squared square story. The other 3 were Bryant Tuckerman, John Tukey, and Richard Feynman - yes, that's right - the famous, Nobel-laureate-to-be, physicist!
Martin Gardner deserves credit for at least half of all youtube videos involving math.
Of late I've been finding myself deleting emails from this channel because the stuff was way over my haed and not interesting, but I saw that it was this young man, so I watched, and boy was I rewarded, what a fantastic set of videos from this chap, he certainly knows how to hold attention and make a great video!
Are there any triangled triangles?
Imperfect, yes. Triforce symbol.
Yes. One example is a 15, 20, 25 right triangle made of a 12, 16, 20 right triangle and a 9, 12, 15 right triangle.
ricarleite But those are equally sized triangles
Steve's Mathy Stuff
I mean equilateral triangles...
don't think so, there would always be a gap
(but if you're joking that's fine lol)
9:46 "or does it?"
9:47 "no it doesn't ;("
that one second era of hope
Dr. Grimes set him up for that one, it was amazing. xD
Sure it does, it's the Grime Square.
thanks for the second time stamp I was struggling to find the part where he says that
Aw, I was hoping for more Parker Squares... 😂😂😂
Damodara Kovie 1:25
This problem is kindof similar to the 'ways to overlap circles' problem in another numberphile video. They place a certain criterion on what is an allowed form and try to find the different forms that exist. And, it's tricky to come up with a way a searching through the possibilities.
If you use the same size twice it is called a squared parker square
This was seen in Scientific American in Gardner's column in the 1950s. Using the technique he showed I designed a garden path several metres long and two metres wide all squares being different. Never got around to making it.
9:42
- "Or does it ?!"
- "No it doesn't."
Killed me there xD
That little Parker square flash got me
This is genius, it's amazing how they linked a maths problem to electrical circuits.
1:44 I love how Wilkinson, the Senior Wrangler of 1939, is right in the middle of the 3 student´s triangle.
Matt Parker could definitely fit those squares together!
Very interesting video and James is great as usual.
Lol, the Parker square at 1:25!
"Cause they're nerds?"
My favorite part haha
Well yeah, and that...
I will now go on my quest to find the circled circle, wish me luck!
Extra thumbs up for the link to the Parker Square video at the end!
finally I can use my electrical engineering degree for something even more useless than usual /s
Heh, "techniquest".
John Rogers I suppose that nowadays you'll just feed the numbers into a computer, right?
Seriously? I thought electrical engineering was the most useful of all fields of engineering.
"/s"
Html broken?
@@whatisthis2809 its a tone indicator. cuz its hard to tell sarcasm in text. so /sarcasm to be clear
How about a Squared Squared Square? Can you create a square out of these squares, without using more than one of the same square? You also can't have the squared squares being the same size as well.
Well, I guess this would just be a bigger Squared square, then. :/
0:40 "Why have they picked this as their logo for their society?"
"Cause they're nerds!"
Oh, Brady :D
Interesting how Kirchoff's Law crops up in the most unique locations. It's one part that I've had the hardest time with when it comes to electrical theory.
So now we finally found a useful application of electric engineering that can be used to solve real world pure math problems.
James Grime is the best explainer.
Hey Vcause, Michal here
Always remember: 10² + 11² + 12² = 13² + 14²
*parker square intensifies*
Bill Tutte went to Bletchley and it was him that broke Tunny.
As documented in some great Computerphile videos
1:25 Parker square!
I wish this had more details on why we know there is only 1 smallest squared square and how we know it's the smallest.
Next useless problem: Make a square from circles.
Circling the square?
Oh wait...
Haha nice.
I don't understand the thumbs down. This was great!
Does the fact that there are no cubed cubes relate to Fermat's Last Theorem somehow?
Phil Mertens My initial response was "yes" based on the content of the video alone this seems almost implied. However I think the issue is to do with the rate of size increase for each successive cube making it much harder to fit them together geometrically. I'm doubtful that you could even build a rectangular prism out of cubes, though I'd like to be proven wrong on this since there's more to be learned from that
I don't really think so. Here is the Wikipedia page explaining why there can be no cubed cube: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squaring_the_square#Cubing_the_cube. However, the proof does use infinite descent, which was the same method that was used to prove Fermat's Last Theorem for certain powers.
Fermat's Last Theorem shows that there are no natural numbers x,y,z such that x^3 + y^3 = z^3 which does mean that you can't find two cubes whose volumes add together to give you the volume of a third cube, but that's all.
I was about to ask that
No.
I like the cheeky editing at 1:24
Imperfect squares? he surely meant Parker Squares.
Squared squares (which are geometric constructions) are completely different from Parker squares (which are just matrices).
A perfect squared square doesn't have duplicate subsquares, while imperfect squared squares do.
That joke that when over your head didn't it?
I see what you did there. But you must be joking if you call it a joke.
@@stevenvanhulle7242 it's a joke whether you get it or not
@@whatisthis2809 Don't worry, I got it alright. I just wondered if a joke is still funny if you heard it 200 000 times...
1:24, you are killing me! 😂😂😂
Love Dr. Grime, more of him, please!
1:16 Sounds familiar...
There needs to be a classic Grime square, but it is perfect and not almost. It would be the quintessence of perfection!
This is like the most creative solution to a problem ever
Moideenktt
Sine sqared plus cosine squared equals one. So find angle permutations. Vectors distribution.
Or dose it?
No it doesn't.
I'm so disappointed :(
I like the little flicker of the parker square over the imperfect square 😂😂
Who’s here from vsause
Imperfect square... where have I heard this before?
Or does it? :)
_"Or does it . . ."_
_"No it doesn't."_
Lol, he's been filming Numberphiles for years, and didn't catch on to the fact that when mathematicians open their mouths to utter the words "does not exist" it means it *really* does _not_ exist.
You can't make a cubed cube. Can you make a tesseracted tesseract?
There cannot be a perfect cubed cube in dimension 3 or higher. We know
that there is no perfect cubed cube. Suppose that there exist a perfect
tesseracted tesseract, then each of its "sides", which are cubes, must
also be perfectly cubed, which leads to a contradiction.
yes of course. that makes perfect sense :)
This one blew my mind. Such fun.
9:46 Vsauce?
That's a pretty great way to solve it, awesome.
Or does it? 😏........
Subliminal Parker Square reference was awesome!
*Insert Parker square joke here*
1:24.2 They briefly flash a Parker Square as a joke.
Hello, Numberphile. Some day, i have a question. And i cant find it out. Rubiks Cube. It has many of possible combinations. Them all can be solved by 20, and less turns. But question is: Is there a combination, that can solve cube from any combination? I'm a programmer, an i have wrote a programm, that count iterations of algorithm to get to start position. And i have found Easy one. RFL'B only 4 turns, but it takes 1680 turns to get back.
Yup, there is. It is called "Devil's algorithm" (analogy to the God's algorithm). There has been done some research on it, you can google it up. I don't think a specific algorithm has been found though (but I think it has been proven that such algorithm exists)
Algorithm is really possible. You can solve each combination, and write all moves, it will be huge algorithm, but it exists. But what the smallest one?.. For now, i'm trying to get it on simple twisty puzzle. Just get 6 circles, place them in grid 3*2, and it give you simple puzzle. It has only 360 possible combinations (!6 / 2) and Devil's algorithm, i think has 6 moves... But it not tested. I didn't write test for all algs program. It is next step.
You mean a sequence that when all steps are taken solves all startingpositions? Nope.
But it is easy to make a sequence that, at one point or another, solves any starting position - but you would have to terminate it at the right step.
It is real. And prove is simple. You have decent amount of combinations. 43*10^19, i guess. So you can solve each combination in about 10 moves(average) So Devil's algorithm will take 43*10^20 moves. One big algorithm, witch will go from one combination to another. And, because of it cycles all possible combinations, it will solve cube in 100% But length, of this algorithm is realy realy big :D
From my understanding, devil's algorithm is the shortest sequence of moves which will get to all the combinations of the cube if repeated infinitely.
This man has never worked a day in his life because he loves what he does so much
James posting not one.. but TWO videos? Is this real life?
Lightn0x Queen
When I have my own place one day, this is totally how I'm gonna do my tiling.
OMG JAMES GRIME, the legend of Numberphile is back :D James is the best mathematician i think he is better than Euler in maths
perhaps a little too much there
He is better than Albert Einstein in maths.
And Albert Einstein has been considered a genius.
Even though I'm not a mathematician, I'm still annoyed that cubed cubes and that 70^2 cube of all the smaller cubes are impossible.
EDIT: except for that one frame
*/>
Thanks for saving the world with the ending tag.
< I would like to add
2 frames with a single frame between them*
Dominik Roszkowski
Heheh…
"imperfect square"
Matt will never live that down
Parker Parker Squared Square
Kirchhoff (4:14) is pronounced "Keer'-choff" with the ch as in loch and Bach. Just sayin'.
No, wrong. "Keerch-hoff". There are two types of "ch", by the way.
This ch is NOT the scotch one.
Actually, the "i" in Kirchhoff has to be pronounced like the "i" in "bit".
such a rectangular way of solving a problem..
I mean, a 1x1 suqre is technically a square made of squares and it's smaller, right? I know this is the boring solution, but it's still a solution.
Nave Tal Unity is considered too trivial for puzzles like these.
I know, I know...
Nave Tal Well, if you count a 1x1 square, then you could also count a 2x2 square, and a 3x3 square, etc. That's infinite squares, but all are trivial solutions.
I'd say it's not a solution based on the language of the problem. one square is not a plurality
they want integers squares
The squares area is exactly 12,544
There is none that uses fewer than 21 squares? Well yes there is, I can make a square made of only one square with none used twice.
trivial
Indeed. Trivial answers are the best ones!
By the way, you said that there is no square made of the first 24 squares, but is there a sqare made of consecutive squares? Not necessarily starting from 1.
Are there solutions that can be constructed out of rectangles, and still be solved with Kirchhoff's Law? Or is there something special about the squares (other than that they are nice, and possibly unique)? I could imagine applying this method to a bunch of problems that rely on graph theory, but this would have to be generalizable to rectangles.
Do Cubes that add to a cube,
Is my humble respect on UA-cam.
This kind of math could be quite useful in manufacturing. Such as cutting a single sheet of matterial into different sized squares without waitsing any. Even the imperfect ones if you want a ratio between the sizes.
the connection between the squared square and circuits is rather interesting
That Parker Square lol good meme
I saw that sum of squares from 1 all the way to 24 on a John Baez video about string theory. Funny seeing it here as well, and it's a real shame that the squares can't be arranged into a squared square (makes for a nice pyramid, though).
OMG, THEY USED PHYSICS TO SOLVE A MATH PROBLEM! THIS IS MY FAVOURITE VIDEO
A squared square with the four color map theorem with vibrant colors would make a cool logo.
Disappointing magic squares, you say?
I think we got an expert for those.
Martin Gardner covered this topic somewhere around1960. Some friends and I spent our free time deriving squared rectangles.