SUMS Meeting: Tang -- Kaleidoscopes and Tessellations

Hello SUMS members,
 
Thanks to all those who turned up to Duncan’s talk on gender-challenged 
fish. It was great to see some biologists show up as well (how on Earth did 
they know about the talk????). This week we have a talk by somebody that 
I’ve known for a very long time, Robert Tang, on Kaleidoscopes and 
Tessellations:
 
"A kaleidoscope is tube consisting of mirrors creating beautiful and highly 
symmetrical patterns. A three-mirror model yields a tiling of the plane by 
triangles with reflective symmetry about any edge of any triangle. We will 
classify the possible tilings of the Euclidean plane arising in this manner. 
These symmetries are realisations of the Euclidean triangle groups.

We will then extend our investigation to such triangular tilings of the 
surface of the sphere and the hyperbolic plane and their respective triangle 
groups."

Also, the SUMS Cake Bake will be held in approximately 3 weeks time, on 
FRIDAY, April 24 (time to be determined later, likely 1-2pm). At a Cake 
Bake, people bake cakes (really????) beforehand, and bring them to uni. They 
will then be judged in 2 categories: Best Tasting, and Most Interesting 
Mathematical Reference. Last year we had an AWESOME cake of a Casio 
Calculator that won both categories. Each category winner will win a prize. 
Then, after judging, the participants and audience eat the cakes, and a 
jolly good time is had by all. Hopefully you all now know what a Cake Bake 
is now, I will be providing more details in the next email though, if you 
are still confused.
 
In any case, I hope to see you on Wednesday!
 
Talk: Kaleidoscopes and Tessellations
Speaker: Robert Tang
Location: Carslaw 452
Date/Time: Wednesday April 8, 1-2pm
 
SUMS President
 
“Hamilton contributed over fifty per cent to the proof of the Poincaré 
conjecture; the Russian, Perelman, about twenty-five per cent; and the 
Chinese, Yau, Zhu, and Cao et al., about thirty per cent.” - Yang Le