Math 450 Senior Seminar Presents "Colorful Symmetries"

Quiz!!

                1. How many ways can you paint your fingernails with three different colors?

                      2. How many ways are there to color a disk divided into three equal parts with one of two                                                       colors per section?

                      3. How many ways can you color an icosahedron with one of n colors per face?

       

      Asking simple questions that are difficult to answer is common in mathematics. The first question seems pretty straight forward. Yet the second requires a bit more understanding, one of basic geometry, group theory and combinatorics.

     

      Using Burnside’s Lemma, sometimes, called the orbit-counting theorem, we will explore this question and others like it, considering the much needed rotation of an object, looking at it from all sides.

  

      By solving a much simpler problem, we will build to the question of the icosahedron, showing with the proper ‘tools’, the problem-solving approach needed is not that hard after all.

Bargh, B. Chase, J. Wright, M. (2014). Colorful Symmetries. Math Horizons, April 2014, pp 14-17

Math 450 Senior Seminar Presents

"Colorful Symmetries"

by: Brenda Forbes

Tuesday, September 22, 1:40 p.m.

in Patterson 301