Didactics and Education

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Exhibition catalog "Pracht en kracht van wiskunde"

The Dutch catalog for the exhibition “Pracht en kracht van wiskunde,” which toured Belgium and the Netherlands in 2022 and 2023, is available here.

This gallery contains additional information about the exhibition, posters in English and Dutch, and other materials.

Modern Mathematics Communications — An Asian Focus

The article introduces IMAGINARY, a project that started out as a single mathematics exhibition and has since grown into a full non-profit organisation over the last ten years. It tries to address questions such as: ‘How can we best communicate mathematics?’, with interactive and stimulating exhibitions, online resources, and exploring any imaginable way to communicate mathematical concepts. One of its defining features is that it also addresses current mathematics research topics.

La La Lab - The Mathematics of Music

We describe a journey through our exhibition La La Lab - the Mathematics of Music, which mixes a laboratory format with interactive exhibits to present visitors with the historical, conceptual, and artistic connections between mathematics and music, pushing forward musical creativity, mathematical knowledge and any blending of the two.

Sombrero Vueltiao –Weaving Mathematics

This paper describes the weaving technique of a traditional Colombian hat called sombrero vueltiao and some of its patterns. The making of the hat–and weaving in general–involves interesting mathematical thoughts and concepts and offers many learning opportunities, for all of which we provide examples in this paper.

Science Spaces: An Open Workshop Concept to Create Science Exhibits

We introduce and outline a workshop concept called Science Spaces aimed at High School students, which combines mathematics and natural sciences with art to strengthen creativity, imagination, and perceptual abilities. The workshop guides the participants through the process of designing and implementing a public exhibition.

Math Creations - A Math-Art Competition

We describe a math-art contest for new creative ideas and their realizations based on modern mathematical concepts currently worked on in two Berlin-based collaborative research centers. By combining mathematics with art and design the power, the fun, and the beauty of this interdisciplinary connection is shown.

Collaborative Mathematics Communication - Experiences and Examples

In this paper we discuss experiences with a collaborative and participative approach of communicating mathematics to a broad audience. We give a list of recommendations and ideas, how the public itself can be involved in creating mathematics exhibits and can become an integral part of outreach activities. The ideas are accompanied by sample activities we carried out within “IMAGINARY – open mathematics”, a project by the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach supported by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung.

Mathematikon: A Mathematical Shopping Center

We describe the permanent integration of mathematical content into a shopping center in Heidelberg, Germany. Main features are a mathematical image gallery, conveyor belt designs, a multi touch screen station, riddles in the bathroom, and at the bakery, classic quotes, as well as a temporary shop window display.

Katzengold: Pyrite, Plato, and a Polynomial

What are the similarities of the mineral pyrite, the dodecahedron as the fifth Platonic solid, and a polynomial of degree 16? This paper explores this connection by using the free software SURFER of the IMAGINARY open mathematics platform, which leads to fascinating pictures displaying transformations from a cube to a dodecahedron, to a rhombic dodecahedron, and to an octahedron, using a single formula. A survey on the ideas and the mathematics behind these visualizations is given.

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