BAMM participated in Columbus Science Pub. The Columbus Science Pub presents a new talk every month. Speakers are invited based on requests from the audience, science topics in the news, and recommendations from the Columbus community. By connecting the Columbus community with expert speakers from across the fields of scientific study who use science in their daily lives, we grow science literacy.

In “The gift of math”, Monica Delgado, the Associate Director of Outreach at the Department, talked about the beauty of math. Every Science Pub is unique but math talks are always special. Monica had a table full of gadgets that we were all wondering how she was going to use. She discussed three topics that she learned about when she became a math student and that she still finds amazing and mind blowing. The first topic was the infinity, where Monica showed us infinity is not only really big numbers but very little numbers as well. By the second topic, soap bubbles, we knew what all the stuff on the table was for! When she asked us to suggest a possible shortest path to connect three cities, a young girl from the audience gave a good solution: connect two of the cities with a straight line and then connect the third one with a second line perpendicular to the first one. People are good at solving these problems but bubbles are better. Monica showed how bubbles can also plan the best path for a road trip across the USA. The third topic, Mobius bands, was an audience favorite. Everyone got to make their own bands, identifying their sides and cutting them to figure out the number of edges.

Monica closed her talk suggesting we all follow her example and put up math shows with our families this holidays. “This holiday season, give the gift of math”, she said.

Article contributed by Katherine O’Brien