Penrose Connections

Two years ago I was granted a sabbatical to study the history of mathematics in northern Europe from the Renaissance to the present, and I kept a blog at this link about that trip.  Two months ago opportunity came up to revisit one of the locations I had spent time in on sabbatical, the amazing city of Edinburgh.

Even though I was there "just for fun" this time, I couldn't help but look into some of the things related to math that I had missed initially.  One mathematician I'm quite interested in is Roger Penrose whose "impossible shapes" made it into the movie Inception.

Penrose's mathematical work takes inspiration from many places, including the world of art.  He collaborated with artist M. C. Escher, and he had an uncle who was an artist and a collector of surrealist art.  This uncle was Roland Penrose, and his collection is housed at "Modern Two" in Edinburgh.  The rest of this blog consists of photographs I took in the Roland Penrose Gallery of "Modern Two."  They may give a sense of one influence in the life of mathematician Roger Penrose.

Maternity by Miro

Never Again by Tanguy

Magritte

The Black Flag by Magritte

Untitled by Roland Penrose

The Joy of Living by Ernst

Hat in Hand, Hat on Head by Ernst

By Roland Penrose

Super Pi Day 3.14.15

Tomorrow is Super Pi Day - The Pi Day of the Century.  Since the year is 2015 the date (American version, anyway) is 3.14.15.  Of course, if you're a real stickler you'll celebrate at 9:26am and 9:26pm.  And then that's it - for another century.

I co-hosted (with a lot of great help) a Pi Day event at my school yesterday - because, exciting as this is we weren't sure students would return to campus on Saturday - but given the great turn-out for this event, maybe we were wrong about that.  Below are some pictures of the event and the activities involved.

 Opening announcements

Great turnout!!

Food is a big draw - especially for college students!

Lining up and chowing down!

Pi Chain activity

Buffon's Needle activity

 

Digits of Pi Memorization Competition (The winner - below - made it to 202 digits!)

 

Tutor volunteers manning the stations - here finding pi and seeing pi.

 A great opportunity to wear cool math t-shirts!!!

MJC's newly formed e.T.E.C.H. put together a mini-computer cluster built out of Raspberry Pi computers. Here it is calculating the digits of Pi. (Yes, those ARE Legos!)

The End of an Era

Today was our youngest child's last cross country meet, so this was officially our last sports event David and I attended as parents of a participant.  It is beginning to feel like a countdown at this point as we head towards "empty-nesting!"

We're super proud of Caleb for his efforts at cross country over these last four years!!

Today's race was the sub-section race up at Angel's Camp (aka "Frogtown".)  Here is Caleb before the race.  His school arrived quite early, so they once again (thanks to Caleb) laid claim to the gazebo as their "base."

At the starting line:

The pack at the beginning of a hot and dusty race!

Partway through - at a spot that was a little less dusty and much more scenic!

Caleb bringin' it home!

Happy post-race face!

The line above his ankle shows how dusty the race was (and this isn't a tan line, as he is a barefoot runner when not in an official event).

It was good to get up to the hill country.  I hadn't had a chance yet this semester to get out of town - so thanks for the good excuse Caleb!!!  I needed this!

Bye Froggie!

The best part of the day was practicing Messiah together on the drive home - three parts: me on alto, Caleb bass, and David tenor - GOOD TIMES!!  (Official practice begins tomorrow - 'tis the season!)

LOVE!

Anthony proved he would go the ends of the earth for the woman he loves.  He did it!  He flew to New Zealand to surprise and propose to the amazing and beautiful Brianna Mulder!  The picture below is of them skyping us today to give us the news officially and tell us the stories!!

 In pictures here's a bit of how it played out  .  .  .

Later addition - I just grabbed this photo off of the facebook page of the woman who helped set this up.  Brianna's friends had her believing she was creating a music video for Anthony that day, so she was being filmed singing to him across the ocean.  Little did she know he had flown across that ocean to propose and was at that moment walking towards her!!

And later yet  .  .  .  prayers of friends:

O

Last week we took a family trip to Eugene, Oregon to check out the university where Anthony will begin his grad work this fall.  It seems like a particularly good fit for Anthony, especially given that Eugene is known as "Track Town USA."

The closer we got to Eugene, the more ubiquitous the letter O became!

Fenton Hall - home of the math department:

Just down the path from Fenton is Deady ("dee-dee"), another math building, which is where Anthony's office will be.  It's a very old building - built between 1873 and 1876, and it does not have air-conditioning, so it's really awesome that Anthony's office will be in the basement!

I found a picture online of the campus from 1894 (looks like a football game - GO DUCKS!) with Deady Hall in the background (the tall, narrow building in the middle).  Clearly it's got quite some history!  This makes me wonder if it's haunted!  Do ghosts haunt schools, or do they stay away?

My favorite spot in Deady Hall was the 'reading room' for undergrads, which was named 'Hilbert Space.'  It has an attached closet full of board games, which is exactly as it should be!

Some other points of interest (to me!) on campus were this sculpture of Einstein sticking out his tongue, which I thought was a pretty classy building adornment!

And the office of physicist Richard Taylor, since I'm an unabashed mathematician and physicist groupie I sought out his office hoping to find him in.   Alas, he was out  .  .  .