Quantum Mechanics

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Izzy Cox, Divya Iyer, Wgoud Mansour, Ashleigh Sico, and Elizabeth Whetzel.

Quantum Mechanics is the physics of molecular and microscopic particles. However, it has applications in everyday life as well. If someone asked you if a human was a particle or a wave, what would you think? What about a ball? What about light? Not so easy now, is it? It turns out that all of those things, and in fact, everything around us, can be expressed in physics as both a particle and a wave. This might seem a little unbelievable, but for now, let’s start with the basics.

Classical Physics

Although Classical Physics sounds like a complicated idea, it’s the most simple branch of physics. It’s what you think of when someone says “physics”. Classical Physics lays the basic foundation to Quantum Physics with a few basic laws.

Continue reading →

Schoolhouse Rock—Dr. Candice Price Rocks!

July 2, 2021July 7, 2021Leave a comment

By Clara, Ceren, Zoe, and Jess

Dr. Candice Price had always been good at math. But when her third-grade teacher presented “Schoolhouse Rock!–Multiplication Rock!” to her class, her passion truly began. The 30-minute multiplication lesson inspired her everlasting enthusiasm for mathematics. It is this inspiration that drove her to be the accomplished female mathematician that she is today.

Continue reading →

Elliptic Curve Cryptography

June 30, 2017July 3, 2017Leave a comment

By Noa Bearman, Kimberly Cruz Lopez, Tina Lin, Xintong Xiang, and Maria Neri Otero*

*Maria helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

Introduction

Have you ever tried to send a secret message to a friend? Did it work? Was it secure? Well, one way to do so in a more secure way is by using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Most people have never heard of ECC before, and two weeks ago, neither did we. However, in the past two weeks, we have been learning how to use this exciting application of the techniques of algebraic geometry and abstract algebra applied to the ancient art of keeping messages secure. ECC was first introduced by Victor Miller and Neal Koblitz in 1985. It was proposed as an alternative to other forms of cryptography with public-key systems such as DSA and RSA. Public-key systems involve the use of two different kinds of keys: a public key that is available to the public and a private key in which only the owner knows. The applications of ECC has been growing and has recently gained a lot of attention in industry and academia. The following information below will go more in-depth on what ECC is, how it works, its advantages, its disadvantages, and our progression throughout this course.

Continue reading →

Mathematical Modeling (Fluid Dynamics)

June 15, 2016July 25, 20161 Comment

By: Annie Huang, Heesue Kim, Sophie Gilliam, and Sylvia Towey

Hi guys!

Welcome to the Girls Talk Math blog today! This blog is to show you guys what we have learned and accomplished with fluid dynamics. At first, we (Annie, Heesue, Sophie, Sylvia) thought this was a very difficult topic but after some explanation and experiment, we learned how easy it is to work with the different topics thanks to the Girls Talk Math Camp held on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. Today we will be giving you a brief intro to mathematical modeling, Bernoulli’s principle, Dimensional Analysis, and Projectile motion.

Continue reading →

Renewable Energy @ WPI

July 7, 2022July 29, 2022Leave a comment

by Jess, Jianna, Jaelani, Karen, and Layomi

First of all, let’s start with what fossil fuels are. Fossil fuels are fuels derived from natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These resources are not reliable because they will not be renewed in the human lifetime; they also emit C02, which can be very harmful to the environment when released in large amounts.

Continue reading →

RSA Encryption Cryptography

July 12, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a comment

by Lily Taylor, Zoe Tobien, Tehya Weaver, and Tayloir Wiley.

RSA Encryption Cryptography

What is RSA Encryption Cryptography?

RSA was one of the first public-key* cryptosystems and it is widely used for secure data transmission. It was first created by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leona Adleman.

*Public key is used to establish a secret key, and the public key is sent in public. We then use the private key method to encrypt and decrypt large amounts of data, but no one knows the private key.

To code: U^s=x X(mod N)=Y
To decode Y^t=O O(mod N)=U

In computing, the modulo operation finds the remainder after division of one number by another. Given two positive numbers, a and n, a modulo n (in other words a mod n) is the remainder of the a division of a by n, where a is the dividend and n is the divisor.

Continue reading →

Classification of Surfaces

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Ayanna Blake, Lisa Oommen*, Myla Marve, Tamarr Moore, Caylah Vickers, and Lily Zeng.

*Lisa helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

The Girls Talk Math camp is about female high school students from different places who discuss mathematics, mathematicians, and theories. We were split up into groups and were assigned different math topics to learn. Our topic was classification of surfaces, which is listed under the umbrella topic of abstract geometry.

We thought the surfaces project was very interesting and cool to learn about, because it introduced us to college level math and allowed us to understand different parts of geometry. Along with gaining knowledge of surfaces, we also got to learn about other groups topics. Campers presented their topics on the last day and helped us to perceive the significance of the different subjects.

Continue reading →

RSA Encryption Cryptography

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Camille Clark, Layke Jones, Isabella Lane, Aza McFadden*, and Lizbeth Otero.

*Aza helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

Cryptography is a field of coding and decoding information. It relies on the framework of number theory. Therefore, it can be used to connect theories as well as teaching others the fundamental properties of integers. Relevant number theory topics are modular arithmetic, prime factorization, greatest common divisor, and theorems such as the Chinese Remainder Theorem and Euler’s Theorem. This blog post will focus on the first three topics.

Continue reading →

Knot Theory

July 12, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a comment

by Erin Gottschalk, Simon Johnson, Meghan, Elizabeth Nguyen, and Brooke Rogers*.

*Brooke helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

What We Did:

Knot theory has many different applications in math including algebra and geometry, and (outside of math) physics. We learned that we can use algebraic techniques to describe knots. When trying to understand knot theory we learned that it is very helpful to work in a group and read the definitions out loud. Us working together was key in understanding knot theory.

Continue reading →

Network Science

July 2, 2018August 9, 2018Leave a comment

By Myla James, Shania Johnson, Maya Mukerjee, and Savitha Saminathan.

Graph Theory

Here’s some definitions to help you understand our assignment:

Nodes – vertex/point.
Edges – lines connecting vertices.
Adjacent – two nodes (vertices) are adjacent if they share an edge (line).
Degree – number of edges adjacent to a particular node.

We started this problem set with learning about the difference between connected and disconnected graphs.

Connected Graph – able to travel from one node to any other through its edges.
Disconnected graph – more complex; it has components.
Components – parts of the graphs that are connected.

Continue reading →