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Math & Science Round-Up

Excitement from all around the world

by
Adam Chandler
August 15, 2012

A few developments that might pique the interest of our math and science readers:

The first is that while Israel failed to picked up any medals at the London Olympics, the Israelis did achieve something special at the Estonia Olympics. And what, pray tell, happens at the Estonia Olympics? Only the 43rd Annual International Physics Olympiad!

Israel picked up two silver medals and three bronze medals, more than Great Britain, Australia, and Canada.

The talented physicists are Itai Cna’an Harpaz from Haifa and Itai Rubinstein from Misgav who won the silver medals. Chen Solomon from Kfar Yona, Yigal Zegelman from Maccabim-Reut and Eden Segal from Jerusalem were awarded the bronze medals.

Also, according to the Census Bureau’s population clock, yesterday marked Pi Day, when the United States population hit 314.159 million people. Slate reported:

It reported that we reached the milestone shortly after 2:29 p.m. eastern today. The timing is not precise, since the population clock is an estimate rather than an exact count. (It assumes one birth every eight seconds, one death every 14 seconds, and one net migrant every 46 seconds.) But pi is an irrational number anyway, so who cares.

According to a population survey from earlier this year, Jews make up nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.