This Wednesday, friend of The Aperiodical Matt Parker compered an event at London’s O2 Arena in which the world record for most simultaneous Rubik’s cube solves was smashed by a crowd including schools groups, individuals, maths fans and the UK’s current speedsolving champion, Robert Yau.
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- Christian’s Recreational Maths Seminar
- Dara O Briain: School of Hard Sums to return; maths students sought to take part
- Matt Parker’s Twitter Puzzle – 12th Nov
- John McKenna’s helpful comment about our title font
Tying knots in light
According to this post on phys.org, which reports on this paper in science journal Nature, there’s some beautiful physics which results from tying knots in light. It opens, “New research published today seeks to push the discovery that light can be tied in knots to the next level.” Between us, I wasn’t actually aware of the discovery that light can be tied in knots (and I’ve done a fair amount of knot theory, and observed a decent quantity of light) – but apparently it’s something scientists have been exploring for years.
A spinning optical soliton (wave pulse) can spontaneously create knotted and linked structures, as the soliton curves around in space, and while previously it’s been observed after engineering them to happen, now the knots are forming spontaneously, like ” those annoying knots that you always get in electrical cables.” (see: here). The paper suggests similar behaviour might be seen in other types of wavefronts, such as superfluids and trapped matter waves. For anyone who got lost around ‘soliton’, rest assured it involves the use of lasers. Obviously.
More information
Beautiful physics: tying knots in light on phys.org.
Undergraduate conference: Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today 2013
Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today 2013 is the second undergraduate mathematics conference to be hosted by the University of Greenwich Department of Mathematical Sciences, with support from the IMA and GCHQ, on Saturday 16 February 2013. Undergraduate students are encouraged to submit an abstract by 1pm on Friday 14 December for a talk on a mathematical topic of their choice. As well as a day of engaging student talks, a keynote lecture will be given by Professor Robin Wilson on ‘Leonhard Euler: Life, Labours and Legacy’. The website promises that
those going into research will gain experience of the process of conference submission, while those going into the workplace will gain valuable experience of professional practice and networking to enhance their CVs and career prospects. Speakers will additionally gain evidence of their professional skills. All delegates will gain insights into a wide range of mathematics of potential value in their future careers. It should be a wonderfully enjoyable day of inspiring mathematics.
I was involved in organising the first Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today conference in 2010 and at the time I wrote a piece for Mathematics Today explaining why I felt students should attend such an event, which you can read as ‘Improving graduate skills through an undergraduate conference‘.
Registrations have already been received from eleven UK universities.
More information: Tomorrow’s Mathematicians Today.
Declassifying Discoveries by NSA Mathematicians
A petition has been raised for the White House to pressure the USA’s National Security Agency to allow unused discoveries to be declassified, and for “gag order” patents to expire after they have served their purpose.
The petition goes as follows:
The NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States. Currently, the discoveries of those mathematicians in their official areas of research, being deemed potentially critical to national security, are indiscriminately classified for an indefinite period, with limited circumstances for declassification.
It is requested the White House press the NSA for an expiration policy for the classification status of non-applied discoveries and instituting an expiration for gag order patents in the interest of furthering American academia and industry advancement and in the interest of crediting the discoveries of our nation’s talented NSA employees.
If you agree with that, you can sign the petition at whitehouse.gov. It currently has just over 1,800 signatures, gathered over a week and a bit.
via BikeMath on Twitter.
The ACMEScience.com Kickstarter
A new post is available over at Second-Rate Minds by Samuel Hansen.
Technically Second-Rate Minds is a part of ACMEScience.com, as it is hosted on the same servers, and I just wanted to let all of the Second-Rate Minds readers know that ACMEScience is currently running a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money to go full-time for the year of 2013. While …
Read the full post: “The ACMEScience.com Kickstarter“
Aperiodcast – MathsJam 2012!
We took the opportunity of us all being in the same small slice of space and time (MathsJam, last weekend) to record another episode of our continuing audio part-work, The Aperiodcast.
We talked about:
As always, we’re keen to hear about your mathematical exploits either by email at root@aperiodical.com, our twitter @aperiodical, or whatever means you can think of to get in contact with us.
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What I did on my holidays, by Colin (aged 35 and a bit)
We’re all back from the big MathsJam weekend. We’ve got loads of material which we’ll start putting up once we’ve recovered our energies. Meanwhile, Colin Beveridge has sent in his report of the event.
Last weekend – as I’m sure all Aperiodical readers know – was the MathsJam annual gathering in Cheshire.
Now, I’ve always hated conferences. Loathed the bloody things. I resented travelling to them, resented preparing talks, resented the uncomfortable beds, the politics, the enforced niceness. I resented the nod-along-and-pretend-you-understand, the gabble-away-with-your-head-down-so-you-can-say-you-gave-a-talk, the questions-for-the-sake-of-advancing-pet-theories, the sessions that lasted weeks. I resented the trying-to-find-veggie-food-in-New-Orleans, the being-expected-to-show-up-for-everything, the having-to-keep-receipts, all of it.
I could have just stayed at my desk and played Tetris. But MathsJam is different.