Summary: if an idealised weight slides into another, bouncing it off a wall then back into itself, how many times will the two collide? If the two weights are the same then the answer is 3: the first collision imparts all of the force of the first into the second, the second collision is the second bouncing off the wall, and the third imparts the force from the second back into the first. If the second weight weighs ten times as much as the first, the answer turns out to be 31. One hundred times as much, and there are 314 bounces. One thousand times, and there are 3,141. Ten thousand times, and there are 31,415… spot the pattern? The number of bounces are the digits of pi.
Why? This is mindblowing. And this video doesn’t answer the question (completely): it only poses it. But I’ll be looking forward to the next episode’s explanation…
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