1. Theatre of Science – World Tour
2. Farewell Einstein Year
3. Einstein’s voice
4. Online shop – closed
5. Holiday advice
6. Competition Winner
7. Puzzle Competition

1. Theatre of Science – World Tour

After our successful run in London, Richard Wiseman and I are taking Theatre of Science on a mini world tour. Next week we will appear in Dublin and then we head to Newcastle in April. We also plan to appear in New York later in the year, but there are no firm dates yet Details of the Dublin and Newcastle shows (and my other lectures) can be found at:

2. Farewell Einstein Year

Einstein Year (celebrating the centenary of Einstein’s miracle year) is now over. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Einstein was a cartoon by the brilliant American cartoonist Herblock. You can see the cartoon at the link below, and the other link takes you to a rather bitter (but honest) article I wrote last month about the state of British physics.

3. Einstein’s voice

… and one more bit about Einstein … you can actually hear the great man himself talk about energy and mass equivalence in a one minute clip available at:

4. Online shop – closed

My online shop has now closed down. Of course, my four books are all still widely available at other online stores or in brick bookstores. My book titles are:

Big Bang
The Code Book
The Cracking Code Book (junior version of The Code Book)
Fermat’s Last Theorem (or Fermat’s Enigma in the USA)

5. Holiday advice

I am going to be heading off to see the total solar eclipse on March 29. If you want a memorable holiday, then consider organising your travel plans around the eclipse. The link below shows the path of the eclipse, which is followed by a link that discusses the best viewing locations (e.g., Ghana, Libya, Turkey):

6 Competition Winner

In the last newsletter, I set you a Nubble puzzle – use the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to construct the answer 24 by using all the numbers 1, 3, 4 and 6. The problem was so tricky that several people resorted to turning the 6 upside down so that it was a 9, using exponents, modulo arithmetic and different bases, but in fact the answer was quite straightforward.

24 = 6 / (1 – 3/4)

The name drawn out of my inbox was Rohit Jnagal from India, who won a copy of “E=mc2” by David Bodanis.
 

7. Puzzle Competition

This month, the competition involves an anagram. There is a highly appropriate anagram for “APPLE MACINTOSH”. Send your answer to anagram@simonsingh.net – put your anagram in the subject header and your address in the body of the email. The closing date for entries is January 10. One of the correct entries will win a copy of ‘Miss Leavitt’s Stars’, an excellent biography of the astronomer Henrietta Leavitt by George Johnson.

And that’s it for this newsletter. Except, I mentioned an excellent optical illusion in my last newsletter, but the site hosting the illusion crashed due to the sudden increase in the number of visitors. If you missed the illusion then it is available again at the site below. If you encounter any problems, then just wait 24 hours – your patience will be rewarded.

Best wishes for 2006,
Cheerio,
Simon.