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This spring, an 80-year-old Japanese chalk company went out of business. Nobody, perhaps, was as sad to see the company go as mathematicians who had become obsessed with Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk, the so-called "Rolls Royce of chalk."
With whiteboards and now computers taking over classrooms, the company's demise seemed to mark the end of an era.
Being neither a mathematician nor a chalk artist, I heard about Hagoromo through my friend Dan, a mathematician finishing up his Ph.D. at Stanford. He recently appeared on a Japanese TV special about the demise of Hagoromo Bungu Co., where a TV crew came out to Stanford to interview mathematicians about the legendary chalk. One professor described hoarding enough of the stuff to keep him in chalk for the next 15 years. Dan is in the special too, calling the end of Hagoromo "a tragedy for mathematics."
Okay, he was obviously joking. But it is true that mathematicians are fanatics for this obscure Japanese chalk. Here you can see a long discussion online where mathematicians are hunting for Hagoromo chalk suppliers in the U.S. Satyan Devadoss, a Williams College math professor, even wrote a blog post calling it "dream chalk." He explained:
There have been rumors about a dream chalk, a chalk so powerful that mathematics practically writes itself; a chalk so amazing that no incorrect proof can be written using this chalk. I can finally say, after months of pursuit, that such a chalk indeed exists.
Similar reactions have been noted in the past from artists about the demise of Pearl Paints, or from photographers about Polaroid film. Any mathematicians care to weigh in?
[Editor's note: Here is a story link for those clamoring for one.. :) ]
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zafiro17 on Thursday June 18 2015, @06:37PM
I'm amazed by the amount of grief folks are giving here, given this is probably the crowd that (like me) won't even use a computer that doesn't have that perfect, niche text editor or whatever. Hey, scientists and the rest of us usually wind up feeling pretty strongly about the tools that make us productive. If that's chalk and a chalkboard, so be it. I happen to be pretty serious about fountain pens, and if I can't find the right pen for the job, I find I don't bother to write.
I happen to also prefer chalk over whiteboards, although I don't use much of either. Whiteboards are horribly environmentally uncool, if you think about all the plastic that goes into those markers and is probably not recycled; same goes for the chemicals that make up the ink. Chalk is just chalk: wash it off, it goes back into the earth. There's something satisfying about it. Also, as a former teacher who used tons of white boards 'back in the day,' didn't it always seem like whichever marker you grabbed off the tray had little or no color left?
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:05PM
I agree - I hate whiteboards and, having spent many late nights ruminating over stuff with chalk and blackboard, I feel something a lot more than nostalgia over the demise of the technology.
BTW - chalk isn't chalk, it's gypsum. Chalk hasn't been used for the manufacture of chalk for a long time.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @10:11PM
According to the manufacturer, this chalk IS chalk, or possibly synthetic CaCO3
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:14PM
That's until you want to make a small correction somewhere: use you hand or a dry wiper and it's messy, wet the wiper and you can't write on the board until you dry it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @11:10AM
You mean no one on this forum has ever left a big white crayon in the chalk tray just to annoy the teacher?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 19 2015, @11:21AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford