August's snippets are here!

This month, our snippets return to their original roots, and are just a mixed bag of goodies I thought might be of interest to Grey Matters readers.

• While reading Numericana, I learned about a trick dubbed Enigma. The video for the performance is shown below:



The explanation video can be found here. However, Grey Matters readers can use their knowledge of quick binary conversion to speed up the needed calculations!

• Speaking of base conversions, here's an unusual fact. For any integers x and y, x^y in base x will always be 1 followed by y zeros! For example, 6⁸ in base 6 is 1 followed by 8 zeros. Here are the number 2 through 6 raised to the second through the tenth power in Wolfram|Alpha, as an example.

• Futility Closet features a simple way to calculate the probability of any number from 2 to 12, when rolling 2 six-sided dice.

• While playing around with memorizing the speed of light in meters per second (299,792,458 m/s), I was originally using the method of using words of a given length to represent a given number (3-letter word to represent 3, etc.). I noticed that it was taking longer to count the longer words, and thought it might be better to combine that technique with words that rhyme.

In other words, use 9-letter words that rhyme with the word NINE, 8-letter words that rhyme with the word EIGHT, and so on. Using sites like WordHippo and RhymeZone, here's what I came up with for the speed of light: “To recombine, valentine, shorten storyline. Do more alive, soulmate!”

That's all for this month's snippets. I hope you enjoyed them!