Lark (Team Schmoop)
Title: A Mathematical Lark in the Park
Author: Jelsemium
Pairing/Characters: Charlie Eppes, Don Eppes, Oswald Kittner, Alan Eppes, Larry Fleinhardt, guest stars
Rating/Category: G/Gen (except for one stolen kiss)
Word Count: 3,626
Spoilers: None to speak of
Summary: The guest of honor at a charity concert is stuck in traffic and Charlie has to buy some time. How? With Math and a Very Special Guest!
Notes/Warnings: Cracky Crossover, drink at your own risk.
Rate here on Schmoopiness, Promptitude and General Readability, thanks!
Summer in Southern California is filled with nice, bright colors. Sunlight pouring across the green grass. Profusions of flowers in primary colors. Hordes of tourists turning pink or tan.
Meadowlark Park was filled with many things designed to take advantage of the long summer days. A golf course, a dog park, a man-made lake and various gardens attracted visitors from all over southern California. On July 4rth, the usual attractions were joined a stage with a large screen and several bleachers.
The lake to the right of the bleachers that usually hosted small boats was closed to the general public. Instead of the usual compliment of rowboats, kayaks and paddle boats, there was a large raft loaded with high explosives waiting for nightfall.
The crowd in the bleachers had mostly finished picnicking and were now awaiting the headliner. Well, awaiting the human headliner to fill the time between dinner and the fireworks show.
A lanky young man marched up to the stage carrying a flag with the colors and logo of the California Institute of Science. Following him were two young ladies dressed in floaty sundresses and carrying baskets of flowers. As they walked, the woman dipped their hands into the baskets and pulled out flower petals, which they proceeded to scatter around the stage, much to the amusement of the crowd. Part of the joke being that one of the lovely young ladies was a mathematician of some note, Dr. Amita Ramanujan.
The young man bounced to the stage and picked up the microphone. "Hello! Pasadena!" he called over the noise of the crowd.
The hyped up crowd bellowed greetings and comments.
"My name is Oswald Kittner."
The response from the crowd indicated disbelief.
"Yes, that's the name that my mother stuck me with. Apparently, she had hopes that some rich uncle would be moved to leave me some money." Oswald sighed dramatically. "Unfortunately, they left their fortunes to the Los Alamitos and Santa Anita race tracks, instead."
"Aw..." the audience sympathized loudly.
"But enough about me, now it's time to introduce the master of ceremonies, a man you all know because most of you have flunked at least one of his classes... our very own Math Rock Star... Charles Edward Eppes!"
The audience cheered heartily. They were all in a state of high excitement and might have cheered a tax audit. Charlie was going to test that theory very shortly. Not that he had anything as pleasant as a tax audit to announce. He just hoped his Secret Weapon would be enough to save the day.
The curly haired mathematician bounced on to the stage, slipped a little on the carpet of petals, but managed to recover before he fell on his face. The audience, assuming this to be part of the show, laughed. "Hello, you wonderful, intelligent people you!" Charlie said.
Modestly, the crowd bellowed approval.
"Are you ready to ROCK?" Charlie bellowed, pumping his fist the way he'd seen television MC's do.
"Yeah!" the crowd roared, fueled by an unholy and barely legal mixture of adrenaline, caffeine, sugar and (for the adults) beer.
"Well, we aren't!" Charlie bellowed again.
The crowd roared... then the roar died off into muttered "Wha?"
"I'm sorry, but our guest of honor has been delayed," Charlie started.
This provoked grumbling and boos from the audience.
"Now, now," Charlie admonished, shaking a forefinger at them. "You all know that Superfine Kathleen is not just a pretty face or a beautiful voice. She's also a philanthropist. One of her fans, a nine year old girl, just got out of the hospital."
The crowd made sympathetic noises.
"Lark's parents weren't able to get a ticket, so Supreme Kathleen invited them to join them as their guests of honor."
Now the audience cheered.
"Unfortunately, they're stuck in traffic."
There were more boos and jeers from the audience.
"Hey!" Charlie protested. "I didn't cause the traffic jam!"
"Well, why didn't you use your math magic to predict that there would be a traffic jam?" Oswald demanded.
Charlie made a point of rolling his eyes while the audience laughed. "Predicting a traffic jam in Los Angeles is like predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow."
More cheers and laughter came from the audience.
"Yeah," Oswald complained, but you could have come up with an optimal route..."
Charlie gave him a stern look. "I did, based on the information that I had at the time. I was not expecting a Cessna to have to make an emergency landing on the 405 freeway."
The audience gasped. 39.3% of the crowd immediately cracked open their cell phones to check the news sites on the internet. Another 27.8% began tweeting to find out if somebody had seen the news elsewhere. The rest of the audience either gaped in disbelief or shook their heads and wondered why anybody was even surprised.
"Fortunately, we have a plan for keeping you entertained..." Charlie started.
Oswald interrupted. "Pay attention, there will be a quiz afterward."
The audience booed that idea.
Charlie leveled a severe look at Oswald. "You realize, that you're my TA, right?"
"Um. Yeah."
Charlie gestured towards the crowd. "They can escape after the show. I'll be seeing you on Monday."
"Um."
"Keep that in mind," Charlie smirked. To the crowd he said. "Oswald is right, there will be a short math lecture..."
Groans came from the audience.
"However, I'll be assisted in my efforts by an action hero who's not just a member of a famous acting family and a beloved female impersonator, but a natural born mathematician!"
WHA? was the general reaction of the audience.
Ladies and gentlemen, grads and undergrads... please give a warm welcome to... LASSIE!"
Relief rolled off the crowd.
The Famed Collie raced across the lawn to the television show's classic theme song. Charlie, forgetting his spiel for a second, just watched. It seemed to him that Lassie was the incarnation of all things wonderful about summer... innocence, joy, freedom and, most of all...
Mathematics.
This is Charlie Eppes we're talking about.
The Collie skidded to a halt at the feet of the woman who wasn't Amita and barked happily.
"Ladies, gentlemen, students and alumni, please give another warm welcome to Lassie's handler, Cary Jacks!"
"Good girl," the handler said. Cary discreetly handed off a treat to Lassie.
Charlie's eyebrows raised. "I was informed that Lassie was a male dog," he said, somewhat bewildered.
Cary gave him a severe look. "The character of Lassie is a girl," she lectured. "Due to shedding issues, the dogs who play Lassie have all been male, but, being consummate professionals, they prefer to stay in character at all times."
Charlie bowed towards them. "My apologies, ladies, I didn't mean to offend you."
Lassie barked at Charlie. Then, possibly at some unseen signal from Cary, Lassie got up, walked behind Charlie, then sat down at his left side, facing the audience. As soon as she was settled, she barked twice.
The audience applauded.
Charlie grinned at the audience. "You're probably wondering why I introduced Lassie as a guest lecturer in mathematics." He looked at the handler. Ms. Jacks, could you kindly tell the crowd what Lassie's qualifications are?"
Cary smirked. "Actually, I'm not sure that Lassie is qualified to lecture about higher mathematics. She has trouble differentiating even simple polynomials."
The crowd ate that up with a spoon.
Charlie eyed her narrowly. "Leave the humor to the professionals... ah... professors, okay?"
Cary just smirked again.
Charlie turned back and dredged up parts of his spiel. It was a good thing that he wasn't a shy and retiring type. But then, he never was when he was talking math.
"As you know," he turned his most stern professorial gaze upon the audience. "Or, at least those of you fortunate enough to have survived my classes should know, math is nature's language. There are examples of that in many shapes and forms."
He turned towards the ladies. "Take for instance..."
There were catcalls.
Charlie speared the cat callers with a chilly gaze. Lassie gave a warning bark.
The catcalling ceased with embarrassed coughs.
"Take for instance, the flowers that these lovely ladies are holding. Plants are an excellent example of math manifesting itself in mysterious ways." He gestured to the camera operator.
Amy hit some controls and the big screen behind the stage divided into nine sections, much like the opening credits of the Brady Bunch. Each section had a close up of a different type of flower.
"These lovely flowers do not look like they are harboring deep dark secrets," Charlie said ominously. "However, if you consider the Fibonacci sequence to be a deep dark secret, then these flowers most certainly are."
He nodded to Amy, who flicked a switch. The loudspeakers emitted a bone chilling chord as the center section of the screen filled with an ominous sequence of numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. The sequence was terminated by an equally ominous ellipse (...) indicating there was more to come.
The audience could tell these things were ominous because they were so labeled.
Amita held up a placard that read: "The audience gasps in horror." The audience, playing along, let out a collective, melodramatic gasp. A few girls shrieked, which wasn't in the program, but Charlie chose to roll with it.
"As you can see, the iris has three petals." As he gestured, he pointed towards the picture of a lovely purple iris with a green laser pointer. "Primroses, larkspur and buttercups all have... five petals." He pointed to each flower as he spoke its name. Continuing with the pointer, he rattled off more names and numbers. "Delphinium has eight petals, ragwort and cineria have thirteen. Asters, chicory and black eyed susans have twenty-one..."
"That's not a black eyed susan!" some one in the audience was offended enough to be heard. "That's a shasta daisy!"
Charlie blinked. Then looked up at the screen. "There aren't any black-eyed susans?" he asked.
"Oh, I'd love to give Susan a black eye," muttered Amita, just loudly enough for Charlie to hear.
Charlie blushed and hurried on. "The common point of all these numbers is that they are all in the Fibonacci sequence."
The audience, not having any clear directions on this, gasped, cheered or booed, depending on their mood and the amount of beer they had consumed.
Charlie ignored them and indicated that Amy should do a close up of the sunflowers that Amita and Cary had in their baskets. "Look closely and you will see that the heart of the sunflower is two spirals, running counter to each other, than conform to the Fibonacci sequence. These specimens have twenty-one seeds running clockwise and thirty-four running counterclockwise. Other specimens have been observed to have thirty-four clockwise and fifty-five counterclockwise..."
"Charlie, judging by the number of empty beer cups flying around, I'd say you were losing your audience," Alan Eppes announced from Charlie's left.
Charlie whirled and found his father sitting on the edge of the stage, petting Lassie. Charlie had not noticed the collie leaving his side, but he tended to lose track of things when he lectured.
"Dad! What are you doing up here?" he hissed, forgetting his spiel for the moment.
"I'm taking advantage of an opportunity to meet one of my heroes," Alan said blandly.
Lassie lolled her tongue out and barked.
"But DAD!"
"Don't you think you should get to your point, if you have one, before your audience leaves?" Alan asked.
Charlie gaped for a few seconds. Then he recovered his equilibrium and his spiel. "The ratio between these floral numbers is very close to the irrational number, PHI, which is also known as the 'Golden Mean', or the 'Golden Ratio'." Charlie said.
"God does not play dice," a voice came from somewhere near Charlie's left ankle. "However, he does appear to like playing with PHI."
Charlie looked down at the stage and sighed when he saw that Lassie was now flanked by his mentor, Larry Fleinhardt, and his father. Both men were petting the collie and she actually looked smug. Even superstar collies appreciate getting petted.
"The spiral inside M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, is remarkably close to the golden mean," Larry said.
"Thank you for that, Professor Fleinhardt," Charlie said. "Ladies, Gentlemen, grads and undergrads... my father, Alan Eppes and my former mentor, Larry Fleinhardt..."
Polite applause.
Lassie barked.
The applause got more enthusiastic.
"Anyway, what Charles is getting at is that Mother Nature uses math," Larry interrupted. "And she uses it in surprising ways, as a brief demonstration by the esteemed Lassie will show us."
"Aw, c'mon, aren't you going to mention spider webs?" a voice from backstage asked just loudly enough to be picked up by the microphones and the camera operator.
Amy obligingly put a picture of a beautiful, dew covered orb web in the center section.
A rubber spider materialized in front of Charlie's face.
Charlie let out the squawk that the prankster had been anticipating all afternoon.
Charlie jumped away from the suspended spider, slipped on the flower petals and sat down abruptly.
Lassie leaped away from her admirers and ran, barking at the curtain.
"Don't bite him, Lassie!" Alan called.
Don Eppes stepped out onto stage, hands held up in surrender. "Don't shoot! I'm unarmed!"
"As is usual when it comes to a battle of wits," Charlie muttered.
"Hey, I'm not the one who got suckered in by the old 'spider on a pole' trick," Don jeered.
"Ladies and gentlemen and others," Oswald announced, "A big round of applause for the man who knocked Professor Eppes on his keister... His older brother, Don!"
They had agreed beforehand not to mention the FBI connection. Not that it was a big secret on campus, they just didn't want this to be a distraction. At least, not unless they needed an extra distraction.
Charlie sprang to his feet, fortunately the stage was padded so he was unhurt, and got back to business. "Yes, the spider web is another example of nature's math. For more information, I recommend Keith Devlin's book, "The Math Instinct." He took a deep breath. "The thing that Devlin calls the math instinct is the way nature handles problems that we humans can only solve through higher mathematics.
"The kind you have to sweat through during finals," Oswald said.
The crowd jeered.
Lassie barked at them and they settled down. Nobody wanted to argue with America's sweetheart. Especially not when Amy got such a good shot of her sharp white teeth.
"The specific example that Lassie has graciously agreed to help us with was first described by Tim Pennings and his Welsh Corgi, Elvis."
Lassie barked.
"And, as Lassie said, anything a WELSH Corgi can do, a SCOTTISH Collie can do better, right?"
Applause, some jeers and a lot of barking, not all of it from Lassie.
"Anyway, Pennings, an associate professor of mathematics at Michigan's Hope College, noticed something peculiar about the way Elvis chased tennis balls.
Charlie walked over to Amita, stole a kiss and snuck a tennis ball out of her flower basket. "When Pennings threw the ball along the beach, Elvis chased it, naturally."
He threw the tennis ball. Lassie politely trotted after it. Charlie strolled after her, but she brought it back before he got off stage.
"Oh, man!" Don hooted. "Charlie, you throw like a girl!"
Cary and Amita pelted him with tennis balls. "Okay, I take that back!" Don called, holding his hands up jokingly. "Charlie, you throw like a math geek!"
Amita hit him with an apple.
"Um," Don decided to distract the howling audience and the grim grinning Amita. He snatched up a tennis ball, hopped off the stage and heaved it over the sand.
Lassie chased this with considerably more enthusiasm.
She brought it back to Don, who took the ball and held it out to Charlie.
Charlie held up his hands in a warding off gesture. "You're the former minor leaguer, Bro'." He hopped off the stage and walked onto the grass. He pointed towards the lake where tons of high explosives were lurking. "Now, toss it out there."
Cary gave him a dirty look.
"Hey, you were warned that there'd be lake-age," Amita chuckled.
Cary switched the dirty look to Amita, who merely bounced a tennis ball in her hand and grinned smugly.
"It's on you, then," Cary muttered to Charlie. "Literally."
"Or not," Charlie replied. He grinned when Don hesitated. "Go on, Bro'. You're not scared of a little water, are you?"
Don sighed elaborately, shook his head and then threw the ball as far as he could into the lake.
Lassie plunged into the water after it. It took her a little longer to fetch the bobbing ball from the man-made lake, but she was soon trotting up the bank towards Don. She paused a second to shake, spraying excess water all over Don.
"Hey!" Don protested.
"Hay is for horses," Larry observed. He and Alan were carrying towels that had mysteriously appeared and Lassie graciously permitted them to dry her off.
Don gave Larry a narrow look and sent the golden haired physicist running off to find a towel for Don.
Charlie made sure his mike was still working, then addressed the audience. "You probably noticed that when Lassie chased those tennis balls, she headed directly towards the ball."
"Faster path between to points is a straight line," Don informed him loftily. He took a bite out of his apple and looked down his nose at his little brother.
Charlie rolled his eyes. Not that he was really annoyed, but the audience seemed to be entertained by the banter, if not by the math. Not that he had really introduced any fascinating math... yet.
"However, if you throw the ball into the water diagonally from where you are standing..."
Don took that as an invitation and threw the tennis ball into the water at an acute angle with respect to the shore.
Lassie took that as her cue and she raced along the beach.
Amy took that as her cue to throw up the image of Lassie racing after the ball.
"As you can see, Lassie has chosen the fastest route to get to the ball," Charlie said. "She can run faster than she can swim, so she stays on land for much of the run."
The Famed Collie plunged into the water.
"However, she doesn't wait until she gets directly opposite of the ball before she jumps into the water," Charlie continued. "Instead, she ran partway along the beach until she found the optimal angle of entry."
"Are you sure it's the optimal angle?" Larry questioned.
Charlie rolled his eyes.
Larry shrugged. "I'm sure you have your reasons for the claim, but the audience may have a few skeptics in it."
Amy panned the audience. When they realized that their picture was going up on the screen, many of them tried to look stern and dubious. Mostly they failed. Don made a note of one tall woman who looked like she might be Fed material, judging by her intimidating stare.
Charlie grinned and picked up a tennis ball. "Well, Pennings noticed that his dog Elvis was doing the same thing, running along the beach and then plunging into the water in order to minimize retrieval time. It looked like a calculus problem to him, but he had a hard time believing that Elvis could do calculus. So the next time he took Elvis to the beach he brought a stopwatch and a tape measure as well as the ball. He spent hours measuring and timing and eventually discovered that most of the time, Elvis really had chosen the most efficient path, thus solving a problem that many of his calculus students had missed on their final exam."
There were cheers and jeers from the crowd.
Charlie gestured towards Lassie. "I'm assuming that Lassie is at least as smart as Elvis."
Lassie barked agreement.
The crowd cheered.
"And the point of all this is?" Alan wanted to know. "Don't tell me that dogs do calculus!"
Charlie grinned. "No, dogs don't do calculus. However, they do make good choices that we can only describe using advanced mathematics. He gestured back to the screen. "Those flowers didn't consciously decide how many petals they were going to have. The numbers came about because they were the most efficient use of space."
He gestured to the lake and then to Lassie. "Lassie, Elvis and the millions of other canines who go after their prey in water, do not consciously do advance mathematics. The calculus has been hard wired into their brains over millions of years of selective breeding, possibly because the animals that could get to the fallen waterfowl first had just a enough of an advantage over their rivals to get their genes passed down."
"To bad humans can't do this," Don muttered.
Charlie grinned. "Oh, there are many examples of even humans doing this, Bro'. I could tell you all about how baseball players and Frisbee chasing dogs do complicate math in order to determine the optimal speed and trajectory to catch a flying object."
"Don't and we'll say you did," Don responded.
"Okay, I won't tell you that you are at least as smart as Lassie," Charlie said.
Lassie barked in disbelief.
"Besides, we are out of time," Charlie said. He gestured to the parking lot. The crowd went wild when they realized that Superfine Kathleen had finally broken though traffic and that the concert was about to begin.
"Nice timing," Alan said.
"It's all in the math, Dad," Charlie. "It's all in the math."
Author: Jelsemium
Pairing/Characters: Charlie Eppes, Don Eppes, Oswald Kittner, Alan Eppes, Larry Fleinhardt, guest stars
Rating/Category: G/Gen (except for one stolen kiss)
Word Count: 3,626
Spoilers: None to speak of
Summary: The guest of honor at a charity concert is stuck in traffic and Charlie has to buy some time. How? With Math and a Very Special Guest!
Notes/Warnings: Cracky Crossover, drink at your own risk.
Rate here on Schmoopiness, Promptitude and General Readability, thanks!
Summer in Southern California is filled with nice, bright colors. Sunlight pouring across the green grass. Profusions of flowers in primary colors. Hordes of tourists turning pink or tan.
Meadowlark Park was filled with many things designed to take advantage of the long summer days. A golf course, a dog park, a man-made lake and various gardens attracted visitors from all over southern California. On July 4rth, the usual attractions were joined a stage with a large screen and several bleachers.
The lake to the right of the bleachers that usually hosted small boats was closed to the general public. Instead of the usual compliment of rowboats, kayaks and paddle boats, there was a large raft loaded with high explosives waiting for nightfall.
The crowd in the bleachers had mostly finished picnicking and were now awaiting the headliner. Well, awaiting the human headliner to fill the time between dinner and the fireworks show.
A lanky young man marched up to the stage carrying a flag with the colors and logo of the California Institute of Science. Following him were two young ladies dressed in floaty sundresses and carrying baskets of flowers. As they walked, the woman dipped their hands into the baskets and pulled out flower petals, which they proceeded to scatter around the stage, much to the amusement of the crowd. Part of the joke being that one of the lovely young ladies was a mathematician of some note, Dr. Amita Ramanujan.
The young man bounced to the stage and picked up the microphone. "Hello! Pasadena!" he called over the noise of the crowd.
The hyped up crowd bellowed greetings and comments.
"My name is Oswald Kittner."
The response from the crowd indicated disbelief.
"Yes, that's the name that my mother stuck me with. Apparently, she had hopes that some rich uncle would be moved to leave me some money." Oswald sighed dramatically. "Unfortunately, they left their fortunes to the Los Alamitos and Santa Anita race tracks, instead."
"Aw..." the audience sympathized loudly.
"But enough about me, now it's time to introduce the master of ceremonies, a man you all know because most of you have flunked at least one of his classes... our very own Math Rock Star... Charles Edward Eppes!"
The audience cheered heartily. They were all in a state of high excitement and might have cheered a tax audit. Charlie was going to test that theory very shortly. Not that he had anything as pleasant as a tax audit to announce. He just hoped his Secret Weapon would be enough to save the day.
The curly haired mathematician bounced on to the stage, slipped a little on the carpet of petals, but managed to recover before he fell on his face. The audience, assuming this to be part of the show, laughed. "Hello, you wonderful, intelligent people you!" Charlie said.
Modestly, the crowd bellowed approval.
"Are you ready to ROCK?" Charlie bellowed, pumping his fist the way he'd seen television MC's do.
"Yeah!" the crowd roared, fueled by an unholy and barely legal mixture of adrenaline, caffeine, sugar and (for the adults) beer.
"Well, we aren't!" Charlie bellowed again.
The crowd roared... then the roar died off into muttered "Wha?"
"I'm sorry, but our guest of honor has been delayed," Charlie started.
This provoked grumbling and boos from the audience.
"Now, now," Charlie admonished, shaking a forefinger at them. "You all know that Superfine Kathleen is not just a pretty face or a beautiful voice. She's also a philanthropist. One of her fans, a nine year old girl, just got out of the hospital."
The crowd made sympathetic noises.
"Lark's parents weren't able to get a ticket, so Supreme Kathleen invited them to join them as their guests of honor."
Now the audience cheered.
"Unfortunately, they're stuck in traffic."
There were more boos and jeers from the audience.
"Hey!" Charlie protested. "I didn't cause the traffic jam!"
"Well, why didn't you use your math magic to predict that there would be a traffic jam?" Oswald demanded.
Charlie made a point of rolling his eyes while the audience laughed. "Predicting a traffic jam in Los Angeles is like predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow."
More cheers and laughter came from the audience.
"Yeah," Oswald complained, but you could have come up with an optimal route..."
Charlie gave him a stern look. "I did, based on the information that I had at the time. I was not expecting a Cessna to have to make an emergency landing on the 405 freeway."
The audience gasped. 39.3% of the crowd immediately cracked open their cell phones to check the news sites on the internet. Another 27.8% began tweeting to find out if somebody had seen the news elsewhere. The rest of the audience either gaped in disbelief or shook their heads and wondered why anybody was even surprised.
"Fortunately, we have a plan for keeping you entertained..." Charlie started.
Oswald interrupted. "Pay attention, there will be a quiz afterward."
The audience booed that idea.
Charlie leveled a severe look at Oswald. "You realize, that you're my TA, right?"
"Um. Yeah."
Charlie gestured towards the crowd. "They can escape after the show. I'll be seeing you on Monday."
"Um."
"Keep that in mind," Charlie smirked. To the crowd he said. "Oswald is right, there will be a short math lecture..."
Groans came from the audience.
"However, I'll be assisted in my efforts by an action hero who's not just a member of a famous acting family and a beloved female impersonator, but a natural born mathematician!"
WHA? was the general reaction of the audience.
Ladies and gentlemen, grads and undergrads... please give a warm welcome to... LASSIE!"
Relief rolled off the crowd.
The Famed Collie raced across the lawn to the television show's classic theme song. Charlie, forgetting his spiel for a second, just watched. It seemed to him that Lassie was the incarnation of all things wonderful about summer... innocence, joy, freedom and, most of all...
Mathematics.
This is Charlie Eppes we're talking about.
The Collie skidded to a halt at the feet of the woman who wasn't Amita and barked happily.
"Ladies, gentlemen, students and alumni, please give another warm welcome to Lassie's handler, Cary Jacks!"
"Good girl," the handler said. Cary discreetly handed off a treat to Lassie.
Charlie's eyebrows raised. "I was informed that Lassie was a male dog," he said, somewhat bewildered.
Cary gave him a severe look. "The character of Lassie is a girl," she lectured. "Due to shedding issues, the dogs who play Lassie have all been male, but, being consummate professionals, they prefer to stay in character at all times."
Charlie bowed towards them. "My apologies, ladies, I didn't mean to offend you."
Lassie barked at Charlie. Then, possibly at some unseen signal from Cary, Lassie got up, walked behind Charlie, then sat down at his left side, facing the audience. As soon as she was settled, she barked twice.
The audience applauded.
Charlie grinned at the audience. "You're probably wondering why I introduced Lassie as a guest lecturer in mathematics." He looked at the handler. Ms. Jacks, could you kindly tell the crowd what Lassie's qualifications are?"
Cary smirked. "Actually, I'm not sure that Lassie is qualified to lecture about higher mathematics. She has trouble differentiating even simple polynomials."
The crowd ate that up with a spoon.
Charlie eyed her narrowly. "Leave the humor to the professionals... ah... professors, okay?"
Cary just smirked again.
Charlie turned back and dredged up parts of his spiel. It was a good thing that he wasn't a shy and retiring type. But then, he never was when he was talking math.
"As you know," he turned his most stern professorial gaze upon the audience. "Or, at least those of you fortunate enough to have survived my classes should know, math is nature's language. There are examples of that in many shapes and forms."
He turned towards the ladies. "Take for instance..."
There were catcalls.
Charlie speared the cat callers with a chilly gaze. Lassie gave a warning bark.
The catcalling ceased with embarrassed coughs.
"Take for instance, the flowers that these lovely ladies are holding. Plants are an excellent example of math manifesting itself in mysterious ways." He gestured to the camera operator.
Amy hit some controls and the big screen behind the stage divided into nine sections, much like the opening credits of the Brady Bunch. Each section had a close up of a different type of flower.
"These lovely flowers do not look like they are harboring deep dark secrets," Charlie said ominously. "However, if you consider the Fibonacci sequence to be a deep dark secret, then these flowers most certainly are."
He nodded to Amy, who flicked a switch. The loudspeakers emitted a bone chilling chord as the center section of the screen filled with an ominous sequence of numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89. The sequence was terminated by an equally ominous ellipse (...) indicating there was more to come.
The audience could tell these things were ominous because they were so labeled.
Amita held up a placard that read: "The audience gasps in horror." The audience, playing along, let out a collective, melodramatic gasp. A few girls shrieked, which wasn't in the program, but Charlie chose to roll with it.
"As you can see, the iris has three petals." As he gestured, he pointed towards the picture of a lovely purple iris with a green laser pointer. "Primroses, larkspur and buttercups all have... five petals." He pointed to each flower as he spoke its name. Continuing with the pointer, he rattled off more names and numbers. "Delphinium has eight petals, ragwort and cineria have thirteen. Asters, chicory and black eyed susans have twenty-one..."
"That's not a black eyed susan!" some one in the audience was offended enough to be heard. "That's a shasta daisy!"
Charlie blinked. Then looked up at the screen. "There aren't any black-eyed susans?" he asked.
"Oh, I'd love to give Susan a black eye," muttered Amita, just loudly enough for Charlie to hear.
Charlie blushed and hurried on. "The common point of all these numbers is that they are all in the Fibonacci sequence."
The audience, not having any clear directions on this, gasped, cheered or booed, depending on their mood and the amount of beer they had consumed.
Charlie ignored them and indicated that Amy should do a close up of the sunflowers that Amita and Cary had in their baskets. "Look closely and you will see that the heart of the sunflower is two spirals, running counter to each other, than conform to the Fibonacci sequence. These specimens have twenty-one seeds running clockwise and thirty-four running counterclockwise. Other specimens have been observed to have thirty-four clockwise and fifty-five counterclockwise..."
"Charlie, judging by the number of empty beer cups flying around, I'd say you were losing your audience," Alan Eppes announced from Charlie's left.
Charlie whirled and found his father sitting on the edge of the stage, petting Lassie. Charlie had not noticed the collie leaving his side, but he tended to lose track of things when he lectured.
"Dad! What are you doing up here?" he hissed, forgetting his spiel for the moment.
"I'm taking advantage of an opportunity to meet one of my heroes," Alan said blandly.
Lassie lolled her tongue out and barked.
"But DAD!"
"Don't you think you should get to your point, if you have one, before your audience leaves?" Alan asked.
Charlie gaped for a few seconds. Then he recovered his equilibrium and his spiel. "The ratio between these floral numbers is very close to the irrational number, PHI, which is also known as the 'Golden Mean', or the 'Golden Ratio'." Charlie said.
"God does not play dice," a voice came from somewhere near Charlie's left ankle. "However, he does appear to like playing with PHI."
Charlie looked down at the stage and sighed when he saw that Lassie was now flanked by his mentor, Larry Fleinhardt, and his father. Both men were petting the collie and she actually looked smug. Even superstar collies appreciate getting petted.
"The spiral inside M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, is remarkably close to the golden mean," Larry said.
"Thank you for that, Professor Fleinhardt," Charlie said. "Ladies, Gentlemen, grads and undergrads... my father, Alan Eppes and my former mentor, Larry Fleinhardt..."
Polite applause.
Lassie barked.
The applause got more enthusiastic.
"Anyway, what Charles is getting at is that Mother Nature uses math," Larry interrupted. "And she uses it in surprising ways, as a brief demonstration by the esteemed Lassie will show us."
"Aw, c'mon, aren't you going to mention spider webs?" a voice from backstage asked just loudly enough to be picked up by the microphones and the camera operator.
Amy obligingly put a picture of a beautiful, dew covered orb web in the center section.
A rubber spider materialized in front of Charlie's face.
Charlie let out the squawk that the prankster had been anticipating all afternoon.
Charlie jumped away from the suspended spider, slipped on the flower petals and sat down abruptly.
Lassie leaped away from her admirers and ran, barking at the curtain.
"Don't bite him, Lassie!" Alan called.
Don Eppes stepped out onto stage, hands held up in surrender. "Don't shoot! I'm unarmed!"
"As is usual when it comes to a battle of wits," Charlie muttered.
"Hey, I'm not the one who got suckered in by the old 'spider on a pole' trick," Don jeered.
"Ladies and gentlemen and others," Oswald announced, "A big round of applause for the man who knocked Professor Eppes on his keister... His older brother, Don!"
They had agreed beforehand not to mention the FBI connection. Not that it was a big secret on campus, they just didn't want this to be a distraction. At least, not unless they needed an extra distraction.
Charlie sprang to his feet, fortunately the stage was padded so he was unhurt, and got back to business. "Yes, the spider web is another example of nature's math. For more information, I recommend Keith Devlin's book, "The Math Instinct." He took a deep breath. "The thing that Devlin calls the math instinct is the way nature handles problems that we humans can only solve through higher mathematics.
"The kind you have to sweat through during finals," Oswald said.
The crowd jeered.
Lassie barked at them and they settled down. Nobody wanted to argue with America's sweetheart. Especially not when Amy got such a good shot of her sharp white teeth.
"The specific example that Lassie has graciously agreed to help us with was first described by Tim Pennings and his Welsh Corgi, Elvis."
Lassie barked.
"And, as Lassie said, anything a WELSH Corgi can do, a SCOTTISH Collie can do better, right?"
Applause, some jeers and a lot of barking, not all of it from Lassie.
"Anyway, Pennings, an associate professor of mathematics at Michigan's Hope College, noticed something peculiar about the way Elvis chased tennis balls.
Charlie walked over to Amita, stole a kiss and snuck a tennis ball out of her flower basket. "When Pennings threw the ball along the beach, Elvis chased it, naturally."
He threw the tennis ball. Lassie politely trotted after it. Charlie strolled after her, but she brought it back before he got off stage.
"Oh, man!" Don hooted. "Charlie, you throw like a girl!"
Cary and Amita pelted him with tennis balls. "Okay, I take that back!" Don called, holding his hands up jokingly. "Charlie, you throw like a math geek!"
Amita hit him with an apple.
"Um," Don decided to distract the howling audience and the grim grinning Amita. He snatched up a tennis ball, hopped off the stage and heaved it over the sand.
Lassie chased this with considerably more enthusiasm.
She brought it back to Don, who took the ball and held it out to Charlie.
Charlie held up his hands in a warding off gesture. "You're the former minor leaguer, Bro'." He hopped off the stage and walked onto the grass. He pointed towards the lake where tons of high explosives were lurking. "Now, toss it out there."
Cary gave him a dirty look.
"Hey, you were warned that there'd be lake-age," Amita chuckled.
Cary switched the dirty look to Amita, who merely bounced a tennis ball in her hand and grinned smugly.
"It's on you, then," Cary muttered to Charlie. "Literally."
"Or not," Charlie replied. He grinned when Don hesitated. "Go on, Bro'. You're not scared of a little water, are you?"
Don sighed elaborately, shook his head and then threw the ball as far as he could into the lake.
Lassie plunged into the water after it. It took her a little longer to fetch the bobbing ball from the man-made lake, but she was soon trotting up the bank towards Don. She paused a second to shake, spraying excess water all over Don.
"Hey!" Don protested.
"Hay is for horses," Larry observed. He and Alan were carrying towels that had mysteriously appeared and Lassie graciously permitted them to dry her off.
Don gave Larry a narrow look and sent the golden haired physicist running off to find a towel for Don.
Charlie made sure his mike was still working, then addressed the audience. "You probably noticed that when Lassie chased those tennis balls, she headed directly towards the ball."
"Faster path between to points is a straight line," Don informed him loftily. He took a bite out of his apple and looked down his nose at his little brother.
Charlie rolled his eyes. Not that he was really annoyed, but the audience seemed to be entertained by the banter, if not by the math. Not that he had really introduced any fascinating math... yet.
"However, if you throw the ball into the water diagonally from where you are standing..."
Don took that as an invitation and threw the tennis ball into the water at an acute angle with respect to the shore.
Lassie took that as her cue and she raced along the beach.
Amy took that as her cue to throw up the image of Lassie racing after the ball.
"As you can see, Lassie has chosen the fastest route to get to the ball," Charlie said. "She can run faster than she can swim, so she stays on land for much of the run."
The Famed Collie plunged into the water.
"However, she doesn't wait until she gets directly opposite of the ball before she jumps into the water," Charlie continued. "Instead, she ran partway along the beach until she found the optimal angle of entry."
"Are you sure it's the optimal angle?" Larry questioned.
Charlie rolled his eyes.
Larry shrugged. "I'm sure you have your reasons for the claim, but the audience may have a few skeptics in it."
Amy panned the audience. When they realized that their picture was going up on the screen, many of them tried to look stern and dubious. Mostly they failed. Don made a note of one tall woman who looked like she might be Fed material, judging by her intimidating stare.
Charlie grinned and picked up a tennis ball. "Well, Pennings noticed that his dog Elvis was doing the same thing, running along the beach and then plunging into the water in order to minimize retrieval time. It looked like a calculus problem to him, but he had a hard time believing that Elvis could do calculus. So the next time he took Elvis to the beach he brought a stopwatch and a tape measure as well as the ball. He spent hours measuring and timing and eventually discovered that most of the time, Elvis really had chosen the most efficient path, thus solving a problem that many of his calculus students had missed on their final exam."
There were cheers and jeers from the crowd.
Charlie gestured towards Lassie. "I'm assuming that Lassie is at least as smart as Elvis."
Lassie barked agreement.
The crowd cheered.
"And the point of all this is?" Alan wanted to know. "Don't tell me that dogs do calculus!"
Charlie grinned. "No, dogs don't do calculus. However, they do make good choices that we can only describe using advanced mathematics. He gestured back to the screen. "Those flowers didn't consciously decide how many petals they were going to have. The numbers came about because they were the most efficient use of space."
He gestured to the lake and then to Lassie. "Lassie, Elvis and the millions of other canines who go after their prey in water, do not consciously do advance mathematics. The calculus has been hard wired into their brains over millions of years of selective breeding, possibly because the animals that could get to the fallen waterfowl first had just a enough of an advantage over their rivals to get their genes passed down."
"To bad humans can't do this," Don muttered.
Charlie grinned. "Oh, there are many examples of even humans doing this, Bro'. I could tell you all about how baseball players and Frisbee chasing dogs do complicate math in order to determine the optimal speed and trajectory to catch a flying object."
"Don't and we'll say you did," Don responded.
"Okay, I won't tell you that you are at least as smart as Lassie," Charlie said.
Lassie barked in disbelief.
"Besides, we are out of time," Charlie said. He gestured to the parking lot. The crowd went wild when they realized that Superfine Kathleen had finally broken though traffic and that the concert was about to begin.
"Nice timing," Alan said.
"It's all in the math, Dad," Charlie. "It's all in the math."