This Friday, Buckeye Aha! Math Moments joined STEAM Factory‘s Franklinton Friday for its October edition. Franklinton Friday is a monthly event in which 400 West Rich hosts a free art crawl, opening its doors to all public. STEAM Factory offers mini lectures on diverse research and outreach topics, as well as craft and activity tables to explore STEAM themes.
BAMM had a math games and puzzles table. General public and fellow STEAM members had fun solving the soma cube and playing Halloween SET, among other activities. A young attendee was trying to arrange the 12 pentominoes and a 2×2 square on a chess board. He couldn’t solve the puzzle that day, but said he hoped to would keep trying on the following Franklinton Friday.
This Franklinton Friday was Fear-hundred, a Halloween themed edition. Representing BAMM, Monica Delgado gave a mini lecture titled “How long would we go extinct if Dracula was real?”, in which she talked about some math models for vampire and zombie outbreaks. She presented a simple exponential model and concluded that, if no other factors were taken into account, vampires would very rapidly overcome humankind. She remarked that wouldn’t be very smart from vampires, as “after humankind is wiped out, vampires are doomed too, with no more blood to drink for survival”.
She concluded explaining how these models are suitable for educational purposes, and how they can be adapted for more realistic scenarios. “This also shows how flexible math modeling can be and how it can respond to a wide variety of biological challenges”, she finished saying.
This was the first of many future collaborations between BAMM and the STEAM Factory.