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		<title>Discover Boggler, January 2001</title>
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				<td width="100" align="center" valign="top"><a href="index.html"><img border="0" src="images/kim1.gif"></a></td>
				<td><font size="5">The Discover Boggler</font><br>
					By Scott Kim</td>
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				<td width="95" valign="top" align="right"><font size="4">Jan 2001 </font></td>
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				<td width="400" valign="top"><a href="http://discovermagazine.com/2001/jan/bogglers/"><font size="4"><b>2001: A Puzzle Odyssey</b></font></a><font size="4"><b> </b></font>
					<p>For my first Boggler of 2001 I created a suite of puzzles based on the movie 2001. To get ideas, I turned to Jerome Agel's imaginative book The Making of 2001. Agel's book is now out of print, but there is another book also called <a href=" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0375755284/scottkimpuzzlemaA/">The Making of 2001</a> that is interesting if less thorough.</p>
					<p><b>One Man's Monolith is Another Man's Tetrahedron</b>. Arthur C. Clarke based the script for 2001 on his short story The Sentinel. In the original story, the famed monolith is not a rectangular slab, but a tetrahedron.</p>
					<p>Here's my favorite cube/tetrahedron relationship. Pretend you are holding a cube between your two hands, using the thumb, index, middle and ring fingers to hold each of the eight vertices. Adjust your fingers until the cube is really cubical. Now retract every other finger -- the thumb and middle finger of one hand, and the index and ring finger of the other hand. The remaining four fingers now hold the vertices of a regular tetrahedron! Try rotating the tetrahedron so one of the triangles is parallel to the ground. For more ways to make tetrahedra with your hands, see my <a href="http://www.mathdance.org">mathdance.org</a>.</p>
					<p><b>Screen Play</b>. The fabulous journey through corridors of light at the end of 2001 was created using an ingenious mechanical technique called slit scan, developed by independent filmmaker <a href="http://www.scottkim.com/newsletter/00-07.html">John Whitney</a>.</p>
					<p>A variant of slit scan was also used in a more subtle way to create the vivid image of the planet Jupiter. For years I had seen a picture of the &quot;Jupiter machine&quot; in Jerome Agel's book. But I didn't understand how it worked. Then Chris Yewell graciously sent me a copy of the July 1969 issue of American Cinematographer, which features an article by Douglas Trumbull on slit scan. Whitney himself writes about slit scan in his book Digital Harmony. Read about <a href="http://www.underview.com/2001/how.html">slit scan and other 2001 special effects</a>.</p>
					<p>The problem with Jupiter was that it was hard to get an artist to paint Jupiter in realistic perspective. To solve this problem, the filmmakers used the principle of a lathe. They first had an artist paint the surface of Jupiter on a flat rectangle, like a map of the earth. Then they pasted a thin strip of white paper onto the edge of a semicircular disk. They slowly rotated the disk to sweep out the surface of a sphere, keeping the camera shutter open the entire time. By projecting a thin vertical slice of the painting onto the edge of the disk, and moving the slice as the disk rotated, the filmmakers were able to transfer a flat painting onto a sphere. Why they didn't just paint just paint directly onto a sphere I have no idea...perhaps the slit scan version created a better cloudy effect.</p>
					<p>The movie 2010 went a step further, using and fluid dynamic simulation techniques on a Cray supercomputer to create a stunning animation of Jupiter's atmosphere in motion. For technical details, see <a href="http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1989/feb/anderson_p1_890206.html">The Scientist</a>, the <a href="http://www.siggraph.org">1986 Siggraph proceedings</a> or Issue 20 of <a href="http://www.cinefx.com">Cinefex magazine</a>.</p>
					<p><b>Also Sprach Frank and Dave</b>. This puzzle is based on the scene in which HAL reads the lips of astronauts Frank and Dave, as they plot to disconnect him. This was the only scene that Clarke did not feel was scientifically plausible; Kubrick inserted it for dramatic effect. David Stork's fascinating book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0262193787/scottkimpuzzlemaA/">Hal's Legacy</a> delves into the science behind 2001. As it turns out there is indeed research into computerized lip reading. Although even the best program will probably never be able to read lips perfectly, Stork argues that it is plausible that HAL could have gleaned that a conspiracy was afoot. In spring 2001 PBS will air a documentary based on Stork's book.</p>
					<p>This puzzle was based on a similar puzzle I did for the issue of NewMedia magazine. The Discover version features photographs of a real mouth. The original NewMedia puzzle used black and white artwork from the company Bright Star, which made software for animating faces to match computer-generated speech.</td>
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				<td width="420" align="right"><font size="1">Copyright 2000 <a href="mailto:scottkim@aol.com">Scott Kim</a>.<br>
					All rights reserved.</font></td>
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