Amusements

A challenge for many long ages
Had baffled the savants and sages.
   Yet at last came the light:
   Seems old Fermat was right–
To the margin add 200 pages.

If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
   And the line’s length is “d”
   the circumference will be
d times 3.14159

‘Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
   I would fix it at 3
   For it’s simpler, you see,
Than 3 point 1 4 1 5 9

There was a young fellow named Fisk,
A swordsman, exceedingly brisk.
   So fast was his action,
   The Lorentz contraction
Reduced his rapier to a disk.

A mathematician confided
That the M”obius band is one-sided
   And you’ll get quite a laugh
   If you cut one in half
‘Cause it stays in one piece when divided.

A mathematician named Klein
Thought the M”obius band was divine
   Said he: If you glue
   The edges of two
You’ll get a wierd bottles like mine.

The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
From 1 to the cube root of 3,
   Times the cosine,
   Of 3 pi by 9,
Is the log of the cube root of e.