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School of Mathematical
Sciences Colloquium
Differential Geometry Seminar
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Two talks by Dr Burkard
Polster (Monash University) on Friday, Nov 4:
Quasimodo's cipher
(School of Mathematical Sciences Colloquium)
Location: Horace Lamb
Lecture Theatre (New location)
Date: Friday, 04 November, 2011
Time: 15:10
Abstract:
I thought to see the fairies in the
fields, but I saw only the evil elephants with their black backs. Woe!
How that sight awed me! The elves danced all around and about while I
heard voices calling clearly....
Puzzled? Curious? Come and join in the chase for the key to this cipher
message, learn about the beautiful mathematics underlying the ancient
art of ringing the changes, and find out what all this has to do with
juggling.
Staircase
to
heaven
(Differential Geometry Seminar)
Location:
B.19 Innova21
Date: Friday, 04 November, 2011
Time: 13:10
Abstract: How much of an
overhang can we produce by stacking identical rectangular blocks at the
edge of a table? It has been known for at least 100 years that
the overhang can be as large as desired: we arrange the blocks in the
form of a staircase as shown in the diagram. This stack will (just)
fail to topple over, and with n blocks of length 2 the overhang
sums to
1+1/2+1/3+1/4+ ... +1/n.
Since the harmonic series diverges, it follows that the overhang
can be arranged to be as large as desired, simply by using a suitably
large number of blocks.
Recently, a number of interesting twists have been added to this
paradoxical staircase . I'll be talking about some of these new
developments and in particular about a continuous counterpart of the
staircase that I've been pondering together with my colleagues David
Treeby and Marty Ross.
Burkard's web page:
http://web.maths.monash.edu.au/~bpolster/