Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium - STEM Lab: Math Encounters Lab - A Deep Investigation of Mathematics

This event is free and open to everyone.

A huge shout out to The Foundry and Nicholas Anzalone for making this event possible! Hours were spent at the laser cutting out dodecahedrons.

Math Encounters Kick-Off: September 21, 2:00 - 3:30 PM in the lecture room at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. Guest lecturer Ethan Bolker, Professor of Mathematics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts-Boston is presenting "You Are a Super Star." Join us as he weaves together history, art, math, and twelve five-pointed stars, creating your very own stellated dodecahedron to take home. What does a dodecahedron look like?

Prof. Ethan Bolker just presented this program at the National Museum of Mathematics in NYC:

https://momath.org/civicrm/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm/event/info&reset=1&id=1589&am[...]r=1

Ancient Greek philosophers modeled the world with the four essences: earth, air, fire, and water. Plato then attached those to the cube, octahedron, tetrahedron, and icosahedron, thinking of the dodecahedron, the fifth regular polyhedron, as representing the universe. Centuries later Paolo Uccello, Johannes Kepler, and M. C. Escher explored a new type of dodecahedron built entirely from pentagrams (five-pointed stars) instead of pentagons.

This event kicks off the monthly meeting of the Math Encounters Lab.

Interested in joining the Fairbanks STEM Math Encounters Lab? They will meet the third Saturdays, 2:00 - 5:00 PM each month. September 2019 - September 2020
For more information contact Leila Nordmann - lnordmann@fairbanksmuseum.org

https://www.fairbanksmuseum.org/educate/stem-lab

We expect our sessions to cover the following topics, with room for adjustment based on new opportunities and student interest: Conic Sections; Non-Euclidean Geometry; Mathematics and Astronomy; The Mathematics of Gerrymandering; The Mathematics of Meteorology; Tessellations; Single Digits; Hyperbolic Plans; Big Data; and Code Breaking.

Each session will include a mix of group discussion, peer-to-peer sharing, student-led discussions, lecture, and hands-on activities. After each session, you'll receive self-study materials that provide both a review of what we covered in that session and a preview of the coming month's materials. There will be a variety of readings, math-related videos, and problem sets to explore and discuss at the next meeting. With all materials, we seek to develop mathematical thinking and support creativity in the solution process. Getting the answer is not required!