Friday, December 01, 2006

Open Day 2006

The Open Day is an annual event in which some selected school students from some selected schools come to visit TIFR for a day. They are taken around laboratories and are given an exposure on how science is done.

We also had put up a Mathematics laboratory (whatever that means). It was more of a puzzles and games laboratory, where the puzzles and games were based on mathematical facts. For example, Shameek did experiments with geometry by introducing the school students to the Möbius band. Arati explained to them the mathematics behind the shape of the bubbles. They learnt about the types of tilings from Anupam. Sagar introduced them to Sperner's lemma. They realized that their hobbies can also have deeper meanings, when Mimansa told them about the mathematical aspect of Origami. Somnath showed them how to use mathematics to solve the problem popularly known as Towers of Hanoi. Four color theorem was done by Shane.

I decided to do something related to probability. I did Buffon's needle problem. I had wrote a flash program to simulate the experiment and used a laptop to demonstrate how one can estimate π by throwing needles on the floor. Those who want to know more about Buffon's needle problem, can visit my short write up here.

I have made a web-page on the small application I had written. You can find it here. You need Flash Player 8 or above to view it properly.