Ed's Story 5/8/2021

by Edward Vogel

I was four or five years old when I discovered a set of platonic solids my parents had in a bureau drawer in their bedroom that was filled with mementos and photographs. I was mesmerized by them. I would pick them up, handle them briefly and then go back to the basement to lay down on the couch and just wonder "what do these shapes mean?" I developed an idea – The shapes were "trying to become a ball." From that idea came the intuition that a circle and a ball should alike somehow. A way to describe a circle would be that all its "circle" are the same distance from the center. A sphere should also have that same property. It blew my mind a little, the exact same rule was true for two profoundly different things.

One more notable exception – The Soma Cube. Christmas 1969 or 70. I remember opening it and spilling the pieces out in to the floor and marveling at how "basic" the shapes were, that they could be made into the cube again seemed almost superfluous. My dad looked at me and said "How long do you think it is going to take you to figure this out?" Fifty years later I am still playing with those shapes.

I tried trade school and odd jobs after high school but living at home was difficult and I decided to join the Navy. My ACT and ASVAB scores were high so I was recruited into the Navy Nuclear Power Program. After boot camp and machinist mate school I was sent to Orlando Florida for "Nuke School." Hating high school really paid off, since I had Ds for every math class I took from 8^th grade on it was decided I would take a remedial math course before starting the core program. I do not remember my instructor's name, but he was a mathematician and loved math. He introduced us to why differential and integral calculus were necessary (although we would not be learning it) to truly quantify dynamic physical phenomena and something he called the "arrow game." The arrow game was looking at equations and adding arrows next to the variables to signify increase or decrease. The object of the game was to decide "what would happen" without solving the equation. We would just get a taste of it, the rigorous math it utilized was something to take after three semesters of calculus. "OK," I thought, how do I learn calculus now so I can get to this "arrow game" thing?

The story of Ed's transition from the Navy and further adventures in math will be posted in a subsequent post.

Edward Vogel is a United States Navy veteran who currently does medical device R&D and volunteers putting the M in STEM with Leonardo's Basement.