Word: polygonal
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...nosed snowman in the Martian arctic. A more serious hope is that the $557 million Phoenix will help determine whether organic life is possible on the planet by securing the first sample of Martian ice for testing. Although images of the landing site, a nearly featureless plain marked by polygon-shaped cracks, may not dazzle jaded space buffs, scientists are thrilled. "I know it looks like a parking lot," said principal investigator Peter Smith, "but there's ice under that surface. This is a scientist's dream...
...that you may sleep at night unhindered by the burden of this deeply haunting matter, I will now lay to rest an age old question: The correct name for a polygon with 77 sides is a heptacontakaiheptagon. How in the olden days of 1992 a troubled geometer might have discovered this fact is a mystery to me—as is how someone of that era might have been able to find out who the namesake was for Ninendo video-game icon “Mario” (it’s Mario Segali, landlord of the company?...
...series, McCall Smith is not stopping yet. "To say goodbye now would be like leaving in the middle of a conversation," the 54-year-old Zimbabwe-born Scot says. "Rather rude." Quite right, say his fans, who this week will welcome the opening of The Full Cupboard of Life (Polygon; 202 pages), the fifth Ramotswe book. Its predecessors - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men - have become word-of-mouth hits not only in Britain but also in the U.S., where all are currently on major...
...pressure from expanding bumps on all sides, are gradually forced into narrow strips that outline broad swaths of pure soil. At the same time, irregularities in the thickness of the rock lines are smoothed out by this continuous squeeze. Whether the final result looks like a circle or a polygon depends on how thick the initial stone layer is and how much the local soil expands when it freezes. Stripes turn up when the process happens on a hillside. No aliens necessary--and knowing how these remarkable shapes were formed doesn't take anything away from their striking beauty...
...attention, and the music its soundtrack. It conveyed something that’s impossible to discern in Takemura’s albums. If Calix’s glitch symphonies were ones and zeros come alive, Takemura’s playful sonic freak-outs were the machines themselves speaking. Blocky polygon men sang along with the disembodied voices; kids frolicked with pixelated woodland creatures during musical lulls. Seemingly senseless static became a conversation between two clay figurines...