Fracture strength

You broke my funny bone
and drew a smiley on the cast

a ductile material
will continue to deform
until it ruptures

You broke my funny bone
its sharp edges piercing bodily structure
severing a piece of sympathetic trunk

bodies with cracks
suffer plain problems of elasticity
a boundary value problem
with no non-trivial solutions

You broke my funny bone
the x-rays lured a doctors’ crowd
a complicated fracture, they diagnosed
then chuckled, snickered, laughed out loud

Functionally stable fixation – they made a cast
You drew your smiley on it even before it set

: Fracture strength
the stress at which a specimen fails
via fracture

You broke my funny bone
it healed
but it hurts
each time I laugh

 This poem was born out of the prompt at napowrimo.net, though you might not be able to tell. This was our challenge: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings.

My first thought was that I felt unable to write something funny – which brought me the opening line. From there I wanted to play with the double meaning of fracture, being both a physical thing that happens to a bone, and a mathematical thing that happens to a number – Or that’s what I thought. I’ve learned it can happen to a plane, which brought me one homophone for the poem.

My #NaPoWriMo day 14 was written with the help of http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org and Wikipedia. I’ve also learned what a homograph attack is and how I can prevent falling for one: https://inspiredelearning.com/blog/avoid-falling-homograph-attack/.

Poem and drawing by Angela van Son

i is a number (I’m not)

i is a number (I’m not)

i has a special faculty it’s constructed totally there’s no other complex number that’s like that i was made up to create the opportunity to solve equations in physics what if i is the square root of minus one what if i DOES exist? turns out you can count on it to disappear once the equation is solved i made things possible that weren’t possible before	i have a special faculty i am constructed totally there’s no other complex being that’s like me i was made up to create the opportunity to solve equations somewhere, somehow what if i am a square root of minus one what if I Do exist? turns out you can count on me to disappear once the equation is solved i make things possible that weren’t possible before
solve equations create opportunities i will disappear	equations solved opportunities created i did disappear

The prompt today at octpowrimo.com was numbers, and host Amy McGrath provided a list of numbers that have specific connotations. My in house mathematician tried to get me to write about cardinal numbers, because they’re counterintuitive, beautiful, inventive and realising they existed needed a lot of inventiveness and creativity (all hail the fabulous brain of Georg Cantor!).

I, on the other hand, fell immediately for i… i has more poetic opportunties than I’ve used. Look at this:

• the powers of i repeat in a cycle
• dividing by i is equivalent to multiplying by the reciprocal of i

Doesn’t that want to make you do math – or write a poem?

If you like my attempt at combining poetry with science, you can find more when you click on the tag science.

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mpancha/2505656136

Putting objects into algebra

TRUTH: row

HIM: Scientific display mode

ME: Alpha entry mode
Converting complex to real
Converting real to complex

HIM: Differential equation solver
Significant digits displayed

ME: Constant entering
editing
Random redefining
Analytic functions
affect implied units

HIM: Counters loop structures
Counters negative steps
Debugging programs

ME: Immediate entry mode reverted
Arguments go on stack
Interpreting of immediate guesses HALT

ME: the wild card
HIM: the delimiter

I didn’t have a special dictionary (the day 17 prompt) so I used this instead. The only words not coming from the index are him, me, the and the. WordPress has messed with the lay-out, but I don’t know how to restore it.

I’m curious if anybody recognises this type of row?