As a long-time developer at Wolfram Research, I can attest that the job requires superhuman discipline and self-control. Those who lack fortitude are soon undone by the irresistible functionality we build into Mathematica and spend their days exploring the esoteric topics they’ve always wondered about instead of building more great technology.

The situation has recently gotten worse.

With the new Wolfram CDF Player and revamped Wolfram Demonstrations Project, it is now possible to explore a mind-blowing diversity of topics interactively without leaving your browser. You can spend countless hours running radial engines, learning what “guilloche” is, and seeing what the world would look like if it were a cube instead of a sphere. Or exploring electronic energy dispersion in graphene and the macroeconomic effects of interest rate cuts, if that sort of thing butters your crumpet. One thing leads to another and BAM! There goes the afternoon.

But you’ll probably be back tomorrow because you’ve discovered that there’s guilloche right on the paper money in your pocket, and in a dodecahedral world, Antarctica could have a face all its own. In an effort to make your exploration profitable as well as entertaining, today we are announcing the Wolfram Demonstrations Challenge. Answer eight questions correctly by exploring Wolfram Demonstrations and you’ll be entered into a drawing for three $100 ThinkGeek gift cards or a grand prize of Mathematica Professional plus a $300 ThinkGeek gift card.

You can get started immediately by registering here. Deadline for entries is April 18. The first 100 people to submit correct entries will receive our coveted paper Spikey sculpture kits. So what are you waiting for? Someone’s gotta explore Demonstrations. I’ve got to get back to work. Just as soon as I grok the firing order of a five-cylinder radial engine. How does that generalize to seven cylinders? Hey, why aren’t there any radial engines with an even number of cylinders?…