STEAM Exchange

We were happy to yeSpeaker showing a triangular bubble inside a tetrahedronal frame.t again join one of the fantastic events hosted by the STEAM Factory. STEAM Exchange is a monthly themed interdisciplinary seminars. Every month, three faculty or staff from different disciplines are asked to present on how a particular topic relates to their individual disciplines and body of work. On February, the topic was bubbles.

Attendees heard about food insecurity and food deserts (or bubbles) from Dr. Mike Hogan, Associate Professor at the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Then Dr. Caitlin McGurk, from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, showed speech bubbles on some fabulous cartoons at the current exhibit Ladies First: A Century of Women’s Innovations in Comics and Cartoon Art.

Of course, a gathering about bubbles would not be complete without blowing some soap bubbles. So BAMM closed the evening talking about the Steiner or Motorway Problem and minimal surfaces, showing the fantastic forms soap film takes when adhering to different frames. We pointed out how the field of Minimal Surfaces was born from Plateu’s interest in studying soap film.

As it is always the case at STEAM Factory’s events, we had a lovely evening sharing the mathematical views on the topic and contrasting them with view’s in other fields.

The Gift of Math

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

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.