First-year physics majors Tyler Strouth, Brandon Petersen, and Jacob Barfield (L to R in picture above) enthusiastically participated in the after-school enrichment program at West Salem Elementary School. The trio led an interactive session to 3-5th graders primarily pertaining to fluid properties, including a classic demonstration of laminar flow involving oil and food coloring. By all accounts,…
Robert Allen of the University of Wisconsin at Lacrosse gave a very lively MCSP Conversation Series talk on March 18. This was not a surprise, as Robert is a very funny and upbeat man and had given a thoroughly entertaining talk two years ago. However, when someone gives a talk with the title “Zombies, Vampires,…
Part math and part magic, the March 13 MCSP Conversation Series talk “Penn and Teller Pun and Taylor Present Mathematical Magic and Mystery” entertained a large audience in Massengill Auditorium. This was the very off-Vegas presentation of Mathematics professors Roland “Pun” Minton and Dave “Taylor” Taylor. Some of their tricks are mathematically-based magic tricks. For…
Update: The Roanoke Valley Governor’s School student, Alexus McBride, who was assisted back in February by RC students Amanda Wright, Lizzi Ciskowski, Sara Dvorak and Thomas Lux and RC professor Rich Grant, tied for first place in her regional science fair. Alexus will be moving on to the Virginia statewide science fair competition later this…
Whether you write the date for March 14 as 3/14 or 3.14, you probably understand why the day is called “Pi Day.” Is it a good sign for mathematicians that Pi Day seems to have made into the mainstream of our culture? It may not be clear whether they’re laughing with us or at us,…
Mercer University held its eighth annual programming competition on March 1st, 2014. At this competition, teams were given 13 programming problems to solve in five hours. Teams were scored not only on how many problems they were successfully able to solve, but also how long it took to compute a solution and the number of…
The Sloan Sports Analytic Conference (SSAC) is sports stats heaven. At the 2014 conference in Boston on February 28 – March 1, “The Man” showed up in many guises (Bill James, Nate Silver, Malcolm Gladwell, Phil Jackson) and we heard from Boston’s sports nobility (owners of the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots; Celtics coach Brad…
On February 27, MCSP students Maya Shende, Thomas Lux and Randall Pittman described the results of the research they carried out last summer and last fall to an interested and enthusiastic crowd in Massengill Auditorium. First, Ms. Shende described her work with Physics professor Dan Robb on simulating the neural network underlying the breathing rhythm,…
What would you expect from a show titled Calculus: The Musical ? For the 150 in attendance on February 26, 2014, at Roanoke College the correct answer was “fun!” An irresistible charm emerges from the show’s quirky blend of mathematical puns, fractured history, and just enough calculus to keep it real. But the heart of…
