Parabolas, circles, and hyperbolas may look vastly different on a graph, but there is a way to paint these pictures on a ball such that they all turn into circles? It turns out that all quadratic curves turn into circles, and we can see this by copying a graph onto a balloon. What happens to…Continue Reading Projective Geometry of Elliptic and Quadratic Curves
Wiki Tag: 2024
Experiencing Hyperbolic Geometry
Experience mind bending hyperbolic geometry through virtual reality and craft activities. Come prepared to test your limits on reality with Hyperbolica, a virtual reality puzzle adventure game that visualizes what hyperbolic space is and how it can be interacted with. Then we will create a fun model of the hyperbolic plane to remember your time…Continue Reading Experiencing Hyperbolic Geometry
Platonic Solids
Platonic Solids are 3D shapes that: have faces identical in shape and size have the same number of faces meeting at each vertex, and are convex. How many such solids do you think meet these criteria? Surprisingly, there are precisely 5 and you can easily make them at home. With a hands-on approach through construction…Continue Reading Platonic Solids
Mixing Fluids
Using everyday items and liquids that can be found at the local grocery store we can investigate complex fluid flows and fluid mixing that is important to many areas of science. With hands-on experimentation we observe the interaction of mixing fluids of varying density. Videos: Floating and Falling Flows: https://youtu.be/9IFwZu6xQrM?si=hZKM1-B2bX47FDf- Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability: https://youtu.be/qgamfo86FQo?si=JnB3s4LKlXQNTafi What is…Continue Reading Mixing Fluids
AI Notakto
Can a “computer” win a game without being programmed with a strategy? Notakto is a variation of tic-tac-toe where both players play “X” and try to AVOID making three-in-a-row. We’ll use cups to stand in for our computer, tell it a list of valid moves, and reward it for winning. Will our computer find the…Continue Reading AI Notakto
Reverse Engineering Luck
In order to keep playthroughs as fresh as possible, video game developers often create environments and challenges which are impacted by chance; also known as RNG (random number generation). At our booth, visitors can expect to encounter academic topics concerning numerical sequences and probability as well as industry topics like problem solving in computer science….Continue Reading Reverse Engineering Luck
Aperodic Mysteries
If I give you a collection of shapes that fit together, it is natural to ask if they can keep tiling, or is there a limit to how far they can go? For some sets of shapes they can go on forever, but no matter how you fit them together the resulting tilings will never…Continue Reading Aperodic Mysteries