There are loads of interesting puzzles that you can make using a chessboard and chess pieces. Come try one! Can you solve the knight’s quest? Additional Resources: A Puzzling StackExchange post about defending every square on a chess board: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/22/how-many-chess-pieces-does-it-take-to-cover-all-spaces-on-a-chessboard A Wikipedia article about one of the most classic chess questions; “can a knight reach…Continue Reading Chess Puzzles
Wikis
Applied Trigonometry
How tall is that tree over there? You don’t need a ladder, you need trigonometry! Come learn the fast way to measure tall things using only your body! Videos: A video from TabletClass Math which shows how to use trigonometry to measure height: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqTaTmkpqmY Additional Resources: A website which has Euclid’s Elements, arguably the most…Continue Reading Applied Trigonometry
Escher Art with 3D-Printing
Become your own M.C. Escher in the 21st century! Learn how to sketch, design, and 3-D print your own Escher-like tessellations. Additional Resources: A link to a presentation about tessellation, i.e. covering the plane in repeated shapes: https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/elibrary-resources/2020/05/Tessellation%20-%20M%20C%20Escher.pdf A Wikipedia article to a book The Symmetries of Things written by John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel,…Continue Reading Escher Art with 3D-Printing
RIOT Robotics
Come play with the RIOT robots! https://riotrobotics.org/ …Continue Reading RIOT Robotics
Using Computation to Self-Assemble Patterns
Self-assembly is the process during which a collection of relatively simple components, starting in a disorganized state, autonomously combine into a more complex structure. During self-assembly, there is no external guidance or direction, and the self-assembling components experience only local interactions and typically obey a simple set of rules that govern how they combine. We…Continue Reading Using Computation to Self-Assemble Patterns
The Game of SET
Are you a fan of the game SET? Are you a master? Have you never, ever, ever played it before? Great! Come learn about this amazing math game and try your hand at beating our SET masters! Additional Resources: A website where you can play SET against human or AI players: https://playset.netlify.app/ A website with…Continue Reading The Game of SET
The Four Color Theorem
How many colors do you need to color a map so that no two adjacent regions are colored the same? It turns out that no matter how complicated the map is, you only ever need four! Come try your hand at 4-coloring! Videos: A YouTube video from Numberphile about the Four Color Theorem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgbK43jB4rQ Additional…Continue Reading The Four Color Theorem
Ruled Hyperbolic Paraboloid
This sculpture by Shalese Fitzgerald demonstrates the “ruling” of the hyperbolic paraboloid by lines. You can find other works by Fitz on instagram at @SFitzgerald_Art https://www.instagram.com/SFitzgerald_Art/ Additional Resources: An article describing how to create your own hyperbolic paraboloid: https://mathcraft.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-hyperbolic-paraboloid-using-skewers-0131751/ An demonstration of hyperbolic paraboloids as ruled surfaces: https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/HyperbolicParaboloidAsARuledSurface/ A Wikipedia article about ruled surfaces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruled_surface…Continue Reading Ruled Hyperbolic Paraboloid
Kakeya Needle Problem
Given a needle (or stick), what is the smallest area shape that we need to rotate the needle 360 degrees? We will look at this problem from the perspective of several different shapes, we will start with a circle and slowly shave off parts of the shape to see that we can get smaller and…Continue Reading Kakeya Needle Problem
Google’s First Great Idea: PageRank
Before Google, search engines didn’t have a great way to rank their results in order of importance. Instead most of them just found every single website containing your search terms and listed them in an arbitrary order. As you can imagine, this was not very user friendly. Search results were jammed full of insignificant and…Continue Reading Google’s First Great Idea: PageRank