26/10/2017
The word 'Palindrome' has captured my attention twice in the last few days. I did a lesson on palindromic numbers a few days ago at work. Yesterday, while doing English with my son at home, I came face to face with palindromic words. This gave me a good reason to do a post on the same, specially after a few lazy months. A palindrome is a word that spells the same backwards and forwards such as madam, wow, civic, noon, so on. There are a few palindomic names such as Hannah, Bob.
You must be wondering, "why are they doing a post on English, specially when they are supposed to be celebrating maths." However, we are actually celebrating maths, which is no less blessed than English, with palindromic numbers. A palindromic number is a number that reads the same back and forth such as 515, 6006 etc. In other words, it is a symmetrical number i.e it has a line of symmetry.
All one digit numbers are palindromic. Some of the two digit palindromic numbers are 11,22,33,44. We have palindromic primes as well such as 2,7,11,101.
Try this:
1) Take a two digit number for example 19.
2) Reverse the digits i.e 91.
3) Add the two numbers together
19+91=110.
4)Repeat the above steps
110+011=121 which is a palindromic number.
Sometimes, you get a palindromic number in one iteration such as 17+71=88. At other times it can take you a few iterations. You can try 68.
The word palindrome derives its name from a Greek word 'palindromus' which means to run back again. As far as the application of palindromes is concerned, palindromic sequences are found in DNA strands and in some proteins. They are also used in the field of recreational mathematics such as magic squares and magic puzzles. In the field of literature, use of palindromes will result in what is called 'restrained writing'.
