An 11-year-old Swedish boy is attracting media attention around the world after helping his father solve a chemistry problem that had stumped him and his colleagues for years and getting his name published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. <\/p>\n
Sven Hovmller, a professor in the department of materials and environmental chemistry at Stockholm University, knew his son, Linus Hovmller Zou, was a whiz at Sudoku and other number- and geometry-based puzzles so he asked him to help him come up with the geometric structure of a series of quasi-crystals known as pseudo-decagonal approximants. <\/p>\n
\"The day before, we had done some Sudokus, and I couldn't keep up with him,\" Hovmller told Carol Off, host of CBC Radio's As It Happens. \"I just asked him this one Saturday morning; 'Would you like to sit down and have a look at this?' and he said. 'OK.'\" <\/p>\n
Hovmller and his colleagues had spent eight years using X-ray crystallography and electron diffraction to try to identify the atomic structures of a family of eight of the crystal-like compounds, only two of whose structures had been solved up to that point. <\/p>\n
After years of staring at countless images of the compounds, Hovmller figured he could use a fresh perspective, and since the problem was less one of chemistry than geometry, he thought it was one his son, who was 10 at the time, could tackle. <\/p>\n
\"You don't need, really, any chemistry background to start working on this problem,\" Hovmller told As It Happens. \"He has a fresh brain. He didn't know anything when he started. He could learn just enough to concentrate on the next step.\" <\/p>\n
So, Linus and Hovmller sat down at the kitchen table and started playing with the patterns of the quasi-crystals. After two long days of hard work, they had identified the structures of four more of the compounds. <\/p>\n
\"Maybe the most remarkable [thing] wasn't that he sat down in the first place but that he didn't stand up and say. 'OK that's enough' after an hour or two,\" Hovmller said. <\/p>\n
The father and son team's findings are published in the June 28 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences). <\/p>\n
Listen to Carol Off's interview with Hovmller by clicking on the player above. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
View original post here: An 11-year-old Swedish boy is attracting media attention around the world after helping his father solve a chemistry problem that had stumped him and his colleagues for years and getting his name published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Sven Hovmller, a professor in the department of materials and environmental chemistry at Stockholm University, knew his son, Linus Hovmller Zou, was a whiz at Sudoku and other number- and geometry-based puzzles so he asked him to help him come up with the geometric structure of a series of quasi-crystals known as pseudo-decagonal approximants. Continue reading
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