Office Hours Live: Checking in with Percy

We do a quick check in on Percy. We will also work through the solution to the mysterious message on Percy's parachute. We also discuss two ancient methods for calculating the radius of the Earth that are actually pretty darn close!

Here is a list of topics with the timecodes incase you want to skip ahead to a particular topic: Solution to the Problem of the week from 2/19 - 0:03:59 - deals with longitude and latitude

Solution to the Problem of the week from 2/26 -0:05:39 - deals with Pascal's triangle. We also go into the Binomial Theorem. Let me know in the comments if you would like a more indepth video on the Binomial Theorem and / or combinations and permutations.

Check in on Perseverance - 0:22:26 - Check out mars.nasa.gov/mars2020 for regular updates. You can also follow Perseverance on twitter at www.twitter.com/NASAPersevere and on facebook at www.facebook/com/NASAPersevere.

Decoding the message on Perseverance's parachute- 0:24:00 - Puzzle designed by Dr. Ian Clark and the solution was discovered by Maxence and Jerome Abela. We go through their solution including counting in binary and converting binary to alphanumeric characters.

Interactive timeline of Mars - 0:56:00 - Did you know that the Soviet Union sent a rover to Mars in 1971? I didn't until I was doing research for this interactive timeline. You can go through this timeline here:

Eratosthenes's method for calculating the radius of the Earth - 0:59:54 - Let me know in the comments if you want me go through how Eratosthene was able to calculate the central angle of the Earth from the angle of the shadow. We also cover how to calculate percent error.

Al-Biruni's method for calculating the radius of the Earth - 1:17:00 - Let me know if you want me to do Al-biruni's experiment to calculate the radius of the Earth.