Week 4 Reading + Activity

Torrence, E. A. (2019). Bridges Stockholm 2018. Nexus Network Journal, 21(3), 705–713. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-019-00455-2

 

Bridges Stockholm 2018 is the 21^st Bridges Conference on Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Education, and Culture, held at the National Museum of Science and Technology, shared with the Ethnographic Museum, the Maritime Museum, the Swedish Sports Museum, and the Police Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.  The main themes and activities can be concluded in the following categories: 

1.     Interdisciplinary Mathematical Connections: how mathematics is involved and connected in artistic and cultural contexts

2.     Papers, Workshops & Presentations: works contributed by the participants are displayed and presented during the session. 

3.     Cultural & Public Engagement: public workshops encouraged visitors to attend and participate in the activities (i.e. Family Night, Formal Music Night, etc.)

 

 

STOP 1: “Marjorie Rice, a woman with no mathematical training beyond high school, wrote to Martin Gardner in 1976 claiming she had found a new pentagonal tiling. Gardner sent Marjorie’s work to Doris for verification, and so began a mathematical friendship that lasted 30 years. Doris explained how Marjorie invented her own notation, and ultimately discovered many new pentagonal tilings”. 

 

In the picture, I saw that the entrance to the Tekniska Museet is paved with a pentagonal tile discovered by amateur mathematician Marjorie Rice.  I have to say I have seen this pentagonal tile path before in many other locations, but I’ve never thought about the mathematics behind it, and I can never imagine that this tile was created by someone with no math training after high school.  I’m glad the author uses this as an introduction to the conference report, which encourages people who are not math professionals or who are afraid of doing math to step into the math world.  This is an excellent example we can share with our students that math is not necessarily something you learned from your academic class --- it can be anywhere, and everyone can do math!  

 

STOP 2: “The Family Day public workshops were well attended by many visitors to the museum (Fig. 9). There were over 20 workshops to choose from, with opportunities to make paper geometric models, build and color kaleidocycles, learn origami, use a bicycle cog spirograph, try mathematical virtual reality, explore hyperbolic puzzles, play with Zometool, jump into an educational “sandbox” created by the band OK GO, build 4DFrame robots and use them to play soccer, and help build a large mathematical sculpture”.  

 

I really like the idea of Family Day that brings the abstract math idea into something tangible for children and families.  Many people may think an academic mathematical conference is far away from their lives and they rarely get the opportunity to participate.  The Family Day engaged the idea from the conference projects and presentations, and offered the general public an accessible way to get involved in math learning.  I can tell from the picture that there is a diversity in visitors from different ages, backgrounds, cultures, etc.  It is wonderful that everyone can find something they are passionate about and explore some new ideas in these sessions. 

 

Questions:

1.     Can teachers do something similar in their classrooms? Like organizing a mini-conference to let students present their final projects? (I will also answer this question myself first ---- absolutely YES!  I remembered I had a project-sharing day with my science 10 class before.  Students presented their Rube Goldberg machines, and students from other classes came to visit and vote for their favourite.  Students in my class who designed and presented needed to think harder about how to introduce and promote their machine.   Students who came to visit learned about new science ideas and engaged their interest in future science study.)

2.     What are some art-math projects inspired by the conference that teachers can do with students in the class with accessible materials? 

Activity: Bridges 2014

 

I tried to replicate the C318 carbon nanotube trefoil knot by Chern Chuang on Bridges 2014. The original work is made of beads and traces a connected graph of the molecule, using a fishline to represent each chemical bond: https://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2014-bridges-conference/chern-chuang

 

The first idea that I have in my mind is to use colored plastic balls to make the knot.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any materials with me at this moment (I also thought about using candies to make it).  In the end, I used my bracelet to make a knot (obviously, I can't rearrange each bread, so a lot of details got lost).  

After I made the trefoil knot, I think the main difference between my replica and the original one is: individual carbon atoms are well represented in the original one by using beads, and the one I made focused more on the overall shape in general.  This makes me reflect that if the material choice will make a difference in how people think and view the project. Would there be a better material than another for certain mathematical representations?