Article for 2012 Jan 15

2012

2012 Jan

Jan 15 Mon

I had a Maths exam today, and one of the questions was as follows:

“Using a straight edge and pair of compasses, construct a regular octopus.”

At my desk in the silent exam-room, I lacked the tentacles and brain and time and electric currants (or currents - I’m not sure what good the currants would do) needed to construct a live octopus, and the front-page of the question-booklet read “Materials required for this exam: ruler, protractor, amateurtractor, pair of compasses...” without mentioning octopus-parts.

So I decided to not create a Frankenstein’s mollusc; instead I simply drew an eight-legged cephalopod, though I suspect I won’t get many marks for it, as mine looks more like a squid (there are even a few ink-stains beside it). Nevertheless, my drawing does have artistic merit, and I did use the straight-edge and a pair of compasses to do the head - my octopus’ head is eight-sided, and each of the eight edges is pretty much the same length. And the angles in the corners of the octopus’ head are equal. I checked with my professional tractor.