Ivars Peterson has made presentations at schools, colleges, professional meetings, banquets, and many other venues before diverse audiences, ranging from students and classroom teachers to NASA engineers and math enthusiasts.
Möbius Madness
Since its discovery in the 19th century, the astonishing one-sided, one-edged Möbius strip has confounded and fascinated generations of people, inspiring stories, magic tricks, patents, artworks, cartoons, playground equipment, and much else. Learn more than you ever thought possible about how a mathematical object conquered the modern world. Bibliography.
The Jungles of Randomness
From slot machines and amusement park rides to dice games and shuffled cards, chance and chaos pervade everyday life. Sorting through the various meanings of randomness and distinguishing between what we can and cannot know with certainty proves to be no simple matter. Inside information on how slot machines work, the perils of believing random number generators, and the questionable fairness of dice, tossed coins, and shuffled cards illustrate how tricky randomness can be. Bibliography.
A Journey into Mathematical Art
From Fibonacci numbers and the digits of pi to tetrahedra, fractals, and Möbius strips, mathematics has inspired a wide variety of artists. Many people are familiar with the work of M. C. Escher and aware of the intertwining of math and art during the Renaissance, but the realm of mathematical art is far wider and more diverse than most people realize. An illustrated survey of contemporary math-related art illuminates these rich interactions. Bibliography.
By the Numbers
This illustrated trek ventures into the realm of numbers, as revealed in mathematics, science, literature, and art. It offers glimpses of the enduring appeal of integers, primes, partitions, pi, Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio, hailstone numbers, Pascal's triangle, and other quirky and fascinating denizens of numeropolis. Bibliography.
Geometreks
Walking the streets of a city or town can provide wonderfully illuminating glimpses of mathematical art if the "seeing" is done with a keen eye for mathematics. This illustrated presentation highlights public sculptures and other artworks and structures with mathematical themes in Washington, D. C., Philadelphia, Toronto, Ottawa, Cambridge, Mass., New Orleans, and other locales. Bibliography.
A Knotty Tale: From Vortex Atoms to DNA Tangles
The unexpected discovery more than two decades ago of several new ways to distinguish mathematical knots precipitated a surge of interest in knot theory. Today, intriguing links between knots and physics and illuminating biological applications testify to the new importance of a mathematical pursuit that began in the 19th century with the search for a new atomic theory. Bibliography.
Soap Bubbles in Math, Science, and Art
Artworks dating back to the invention of soap illustrate the wonder of soap bubbles and soap films. Soap bubbles have inspired not only art but also important developments in mathematics and science. Get a fresh perspective on minimal surfaces and their role in art, mathematics, science, and engineering. Bibliography.
MythMath
Ponder the number of Eskimo words for snow, the tragic fate of lemmings, the golden ratio's mysterious pervasiveness, and other myths of the modern media age. How do such stories become widely accepted "truths"? Get the scoop on the Nobel prize for mathematics, bumblebee modeling, Galois' last hours, young Gauss' quick calculation, and more. Bibliography.
Newton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System
With astronomical questions inspiring new mathematics, the remarkable
insights of Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and Henri Poincaré paved the way to
celestial mechanics and modern notions of chaotic dynamics. The result is a new
picture of a solar system less placid and predictable that its venerable
clockwork image would suggest. Bibliography.
Several case studies illustrate how significant or crowd-pleasing developments in mathematics can gain media attention, in print, online, and elsewhere. Learn how public relations efforts to publicize mathematics can garner public attention. Get a glimpse of how and why major journals, such as Science and Nature, control much of science coverage in the media.
Pancake Sorting, Prefix Reversals, and DNA Rearrangements
The seemingly simple problem of sorting a stack of differently sized pancakes has become a staple of theoretical computer science and led to insights into the evolution of species. First proposed many years ago in The American Mathematical Monthly, the problem attracted the attention of noted mathematicians and computer scientists. It now plays an important role in the realm of molecular biology for making sense of DNA rearrangements.
Adventures in the MathZone: A Workshop for Middle School Teachers
Imagine visiting a mathematical amusement park. Try out the Möbius-strip slide, roller coaster, and climber, experience the chaos of the Tilt-A-Whirl, figure out the odds in unusual dice games or play math dice, untangle some knots, four-color a map, do some fold-and-cut paperwork, configure an origami quilt, and much more. This entertaining, provocative set of math activities and thought experiments brings many aspects of modern mathematics to the classroom. Bibliography.
