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BAMM @ the Museum

This Spring we also finally started a couple of partnerships we were looking at since last year. The program is called BAMM @ the Museum and it is a great way for us to extend our programming to other cities in Ohio. Museums are great hubs for interactive learning and they often offer workshops and other programming beyond their permanent exhibits.

In February and March, we visited for the first time two of our state’s great museums: AHA! A Hands-On Adventure, A Children’s Museum, in Lancaster, and The Works, Ohio Center for History, Art and Technology, in Newark.

AHA! is a very special museum for toddlers. There we set a station for three hours, during which a few toddlers stopped to play and experiment with materials such building tiles, rep-tiles puzzles, and Frogs and Toads. One 6-year old girl was very commited in trying all our activities and upon solving a puzzle looked at us like asking “What’s next?”

Symmetric shape built by a toddler at The Works MuseumWe crashed The Works on a slow rainy day but enjoyed hosting their Curious Kids program. Curious Kids is a weekly workshop for 2- to 6-year olds that lasts 30 minutes. Bart Snapp led a workshop on tilings and symmetries. The tables were fulled with wood tiles with different equilateral shapes and kids were asked to put them together creating patterns. He showed some examples with different types of symmetries and the little ones, with some help from their parents, were able to come up with examples of their own.

We promised to come back for Curious Kids every month. We will also join another one of their programs: Girls Night In, for teenage girls and their mothers.

We hope to find other museums in cities around Columbus, so that we can extend our math programming to all Ohio.

BAMM and the AAASCEC

The Department of African American and African Studies has a Community Extension Center (CEC) located on the Near Eastside of Columbus. The CEC strives to provide academic and community education opportunities for its Near Eastside neighbors and the greater Central Ohio community. We were lucky to have come in contact with the AAAS Departament and are now joining their efforts offering math programming at the CEC.

On three consecutive Fridays in February and March, we offered a Mathmagic workshop there. Every session we taught one or two different magic tricks, so people who wanted to come to all would not be seeing repeated content. The workshop was addressed to middle school students, but some parents and other accompanying adults joined to. We were really happy to see adults and children alike very engaged in discovering the math behind the magic tricks.

That is not all, because we will be offering a math exhibit every month on the second Saturday. On those days, which we have called Math Day, from 12:30 to 3 pm everybody is welcomed to stop at the CEC and explore the beauty and richness of mathematics through numerous games, puzzles and crafts.

We also plan to keep on bringing more workshops for the K-12 students in the community, as well as other math programming.

Math at the Market

On October 19 OSU joined Celebration of Mind for the first time ever. Celebration of Mind is a yearly event in which people all around the world gets together to share their love for puzzles, games, math, and magic. It is also a commemoration of Martin Gardner’s legacy on his birthday (October 21).

But, who was Martin Gardner? He was an American popular science writer and pioneer of the field of Recreational Mathematics. For many years, he wrote a column, “Mathematical Games”, in Scientific American. He’s column brought mathematics to a big audience and captivated their minds. His monthly puzzle special compelled readers to try solving them, or else they had to wait a full month to know the answer. Gardner is an inspiration for us and many people who works on popularization of mathematics.

A young couple trying to solve the snake cube puzzleThis year, the Department of Mathematics, through the outreach initiative, participated in this great Celebration. Erika Roldan, the Director of Outreach, had an idea: what if we could bring math to the streets and put it side by side with what people nurtures from? So we went to Clintonville Farmer ‘s Market and “sold” math between apples and tamales, for free! What a better way of celebrating Gardner than bringing math to all people and mix it up with everyday life, like he did?

Our booth in the Market featured games and puzzles Gardner wrote about. We also had posters with challenges and puzzles to go.

At first, people looked at us with suspicion. More than one was probably wondering what was their worst nightmare doing at their favorite market. We offered pi and pentomino shaped organic cookies for those who solved a puzzle, and a few decided to give a try. Little by little more people approached our table. Some stopped, continued shopping and then came back. Once a puzzle was solved, people gained confidence and wanted to try another. Children were seriously engaged playing with math and their parents almost have to drag them away to continue with the shopping.

Then came the bubbles. You can always capture and audience when showing the amazing shapes soap film takes when sticking to the skeleton of a Platonic Solid. By the time the Market was about to end, people were asking if we were going to be there every Saturday.Erika showing a cubic bubble inside the skeleton of a cube

The purpose of the outreach initiative from the Department of Mathematics is to reach the general public of all ages and backgrounds. Events like this fulfill that purpose. When our events take place at a school, a science fair, or even here at OSU, attendees have to be interested enough to make the effort of coming. At the Market, we gave math to people who was not looking for it or even expecting it. We will continue to organize more of these activities to keep up with our mission.

A special thank you to the volunteers who were at the booth sharing their love for math: Maritza Sirvent, Yiwei Ren, KT Goldstein, and Rachel Skipper for baking cookies.

BAMM @ the STEAM Factory

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.

Monica presenting a mini lecture about vampires and mathThis 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.

Ciencias 2019

BAMM attended Ciencias 2019. The event, organized by the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), is OSU’s Annual Diversity in STEM Networking Event.

We had the opportunity to connect with underrepresented minority STEM students and professionals at Ohio State. The attendees enjoyed math by engaging in solving puzzles on our table.

Cole, an Earth Sciences graduate student, said he experienced the “aha!” moment when he figured out a way of solving a puzzle. The puzzle consists of 4 knights on a 3 by 3 chessboard, two black knights on the corners of one side of the board, and two white ones on the corners of the opposing side. The goal is to move the pieces until the black ones are where the white ones were in the beginning, and vice versa. Of course the pieces can only be moved following chess rules: the knight moves tracing an “L”, to a square that is two squares away horizontally and one square vertically, or two squares vertically and one square horizontally.

Cole has almost given up when he saw it. He said “All pieces move in the same way, so we can circle them around until we reach 4 knights on a 3 by 3 chessboard.the desired configuration”. And he did it! Then his friend came and solved the puzzle in a different way. He then experienced a second “aha!” moment.

Other attendees solved the tangram and the soma cube. We loved sharing our passion for math with OSU students, faculty, and staff from different departments.

BAMM strives to be an inclusive program. Some of our activities target specific underrepresented minorities and most of them offer bilingual support (English/Spanish).