Chapter 6

This chapter mainly revolves around Piet Hein. Piet Hein had a number of different professions. One of his big projects was in Stockholm Sweden. The city decided to rebuild a series of old houses in the "heart of the city." They were struggling with this project so they had to ask Hein for some help. He came up with something called a superellipse, which wasn't too rounded or too orthogonal. In the chapter it was described as "a happy blend of elliptical and rectangular beauty." This design worked perfectly for the city and inspired other people to use it for different reasons. After working for the city of Stockholm, Hein was asked to use his theory to make superelliptical desks, chairs, tables, and beds. These were so popular because they had no corners.
The chapter then went on to talk a little bit about Columbus how he was able to make an egg stand by smashing a piece off of it, something that no one else at that banquet was able to do. This was continued when Gardner talked about his proof about how an oval is able to stand up on it's own. He proposed that if the center of gravity of the egg, and the center of curvature of the egg are vertically aligned then the egg will be able to stand up on its own. However Gardner thought that the center of curvature had to be a certain length about the center of gravity. It was proved later by U.S. Navy commander, C. E. Gremer, that the center of curvature can be infinitely high and the superegg will still remain standing.
Gardner was able to get a good amount of this information about Piet Hein from an old article from Life Magazine. This is where he got the information about his work in Stockholm. What he didn't really talk about was how popular he was in his home country, Denmark. I never really got the sense of his popularity from reading the chapter. He was known as a poet, and one out of every Dane owned a volume of his work. (Hicks) He had written over 7,000 poems and was known for many famous quotes. "In Scandinavian countries a clever after-dinner speaker is defined as one who can talk for 30 minutes without quoting Piet Hein."(Hicks) From reading the chapter I had no idea about the impact he had on this part of the country with his poetry. Since it's a math book I suppose that its is okay that this was left out, but still it is an amazing fact about his past. I am pleased that Garnder left about parts of his personal and schooling history however. In the article it talked a little bit about his schooling history, which wouldn't have been necessary for this chapter. It is already clear from reading this chapter that he must have had an amazing education. Its also talked about how he had been married three times and how he wasn't easy to be around. These facts also would have been unnecessary for the purpose that Gardner was trying to convey.
The source he used to learn about the superellipses was not so straight forward. The article from Mathematics Magazine mainly consisted of confusing calculus equations. I was glad that he did not add any of these complex equations in the chapter. There were a few equations in the chapter that were rather easy to understand, but most of the ones in the article were way above my head. The only one I was able to sort of understand was the integral. It used the integral to solve the area under the curve. I was taught this in calculus so I am able to understand the concept. If there were any equations from the article that I would have picked for him to put in it would have been the integral.

J. Allard, "Note on Squares and Cubes," Mathematical Magazine, Vol. 37, September 1964, p. 210-          14
J. Hicks, "Piet Hein, Bestrides Art and Science," Life, October 14, 1966 pp. 55-56.