Sam Hartburn
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samhartburn.bsky.social
Sam Hartburn
@samhartburn.bsky.social
570 followers 97 following 160 posts
Freelance author, editor, creative mathematician
www.samhartburn.co.uk
www.qbfproofreading.co.uk
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samhartburn.bsky.social
For my son's 14th birthday he requested a chocolate cake, and as he loves guitar my daughter and I made a chocolate guitar cake. It got exactly the response I hoped for - 'I'm impressed by how accurate it is'.
Cake in the shape of a guitar. The body is on one cake board and the neck on another - it was too big to all fit on one board. It's covered in chocolate buttercream. It uses fudge fingers for the bridge and the bit next to it that the strings attach to, rolos for the volume and eq knobs, silver balls for the pickups (humbuckers apparently) and fretboard inlays, matchmakers for the frets and oreo bits for the tuning pegs.
June 7, 2025 at 9:21 AM
samhartburn.bsky.social
I spent my Sunday at a top-secret location rehearsing for an exciting maths music thing. Can't say anything more yet but watch this space...

#maths #music #MathsMusic #PseudoRandomEnsemble
Photo of four people in a small rehearsal room. I'm standing behind a keyboard, singing into a mic with my hands in the air. Gavan is playing clarinet. The other Sam is playing keyboard and Colin is playing guitar. Photo of a unit in an industrial estate. One door is open and through it you can see stairs with neon lights. The closed door is red and has the letters 'H W A' on it. Group selfie of me, Gavan, Colin and the other Sam. Bad lighting.
March 10, 2025 at 7:15 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
#MathsArtMarch day 5: Discovery

Two middle-of-the-night discoveries I made while waiting for my elderly dog to do his thing in the garden.

1: When only the over-bench lights are on there's a square shadow in the middle of the kitchen.

2: Cool cheese grater shadow!
Photo of a kitchen floor. There is a square shadow in the middle of the floor, formed by the overlap of lighter shadows from each side. Close-up photo of a white measuring cup and a cheese grater. The shadow made by the grater on the cup looked like a hexagonal grid from a distance. Close up the shapes are curved, and get bigger as the cup curves away from the grater.
March 5, 2025 at 12:25 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
#MathArtMarch Days 3 and 4: Nature and Swirly

Nature: a Pythagorean tree superimposed on a photo of me and my kids at the beautiful tree that used to be at Sycamore Gap, on Hadrian's Wall.

Swirly: another picture made by drawing circles through points on a parametric curve, this time a spiral.
A Pythagorean tree superimposed on a photo of Sam and her children at the beautiful tree that used to be at Sycamore Gap, on Hadrian's Wall. The Pythagorean tree is a fractal made by drawing a square with a right-angled triangle on top of it, then drawing the same thing on the two other sides of the triangle, and so on recursively. It makes a shape that is similar but wider than the Sycamore Gap tree. A picture made by drawing circles through points on a parametric curve, this time a spiral. The circles are in pastel colours, and they are smaller in the centre and get bigger as they spiral outwards, forming overlapping spiraling arms.
March 4, 2025 at 8:42 AM
samhartburn.bsky.social
#MathArtMarch Day 2: On a Square Grid

I made this for Craig Kaplan's Swirled Series, which is a fantastic collection of animations starting and ending with a square grid. isohedral.ca/swirled-seri...
March 2, 2025 at 1:37 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
Looks so professional, doesn't it? Not shown: the awful performance that resulted from playing an unfamiliar keyboard with no time for rehearsal and being barely able to hear the keyboard on stage. There are many joys in picking up a new skill as an adult, but this was a low point!
Photo of Sam playing a keyboard and singing into a microphone on stage with a black curtain behind.
January 31, 2025 at 8:40 AM
samhartburn.bsky.social
It was such a joy to sing to a warm and welcoming audience at the open mic session at Harry Baker's 'Something Borrowed' last night. The ARK Cliftonville Cultural Space is a gorgeous venue.
Photo of Sam standing in front of a microphone. There are white marble steps behind her leading up to a raised area surrounded by wooden panelling, with boards showing Hebrew lettering above them. There are some audience members in front of the camera, and there is a balcony covered in fairy lights to the right of the shot.
January 23, 2025 at 9:12 AM
samhartburn.bsky.social
I haven't done #NerdyLooks before, but it occurred to me that this is something of a look and it's quite nerdy. The scarf is a representation of a Klein surface - it's a Mobius loop but also has a self-intersection (the fabric goes through itself) along its entire length.
Photo of Sam wearing a white woolly hat, big sunglasses, a crochet scarf and a yellow coat. The sky behind her is a deep blue.
January 9, 2025 at 6:27 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
Playing around with tangents of sin(x) in GeoGebra. The diamond grid was a surprise!
January 4, 2025 at 3:54 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
Possibly the best Chrismas present ever! Handmade coasters showing the most efficient ways to arrange a given number of squares inside a bigger square. Or, as I call them, tumbledown squares.
Photo of six coasters made from small squares of wood in clear epoxy resin. Each coaster contains a different number of squares (5, 11, 17, 18, 19 and 29). The squares are arranged in the most efficent way known to arrange a given number of squares inside a bigger square, which in these cases leads to lots of misaligned squares with gaps between them and with no symmetry. Unfortunately the squares floated in the resin and became even wonkier than they should be.
December 25, 2024 at 5:13 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
In 2019 I made a many-to-many shape sorter toy. The shapes were constructed so that each one fits through at least two of the holes, depending on which way round they are.

I wrote about it for The Aperiodical:
aperiodical.com/2019/03/many...
Photo of a 3D-printed shape sorter with six holes: square, rectangle, irregular hexagon, equilateral triangle, regular hexagon, circle. In front of it there are five 3D-printed solid shapes; each one has a combination of curved faces and flat faces.
November 16, 2024 at 2:17 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
I had a fantastic time talking about square packing for An Evening of Unnecessary Detail with @fotsn.bsky.social last night! Such an enthusiastic audience, and I think I talked them into loving these slightly erratic square arrangements as much as I do.
Photo of me on stage with square packing for 18 squares and 19 squares inside a bigger square on slide behind. The slide includes song lyrics 'With their ramshackle look and their pieces that slip, The quirky little gaps where nothing'll fit'. A few audience members are also visible. Photo of me on stage with square packing for 18 squares and 19 squares inside a bigger square on slide behind, covered in little hearts. The slide includes song lyrics 'It don't get sweeter than the Tumbledown Squares'. A few audience members are also visible. Photo of me in front of An Evening of Unnecessary Detail holding screen, with Steve Mould visible at desk behind. Photo of me playing keyboard on stage with audience members also visible.
November 12, 2024 at 3:44 PM
samhartburn.bsky.social
Approximately 4.3% of the people at this year's #BigMathsJam were called Sam - and here we all are!
A photo of 8 people, all with cheesy grins, all of whom are called Sam
November 4, 2024 at 4:50 PM