Intro to Relativity

June 10, 2016July 25, 2016Leave a comment

By: Miranda Copenhaver, Chloe Nash, Wanda Wilkins, Lauren Behringer, and Jazmin Santillan C.

Throughout this week, we have worked through multiple problems dealing with both classical mechanics and special relativity. We found the main difference between classical mechanics and special relativity to be the assumptions made about time as a constant. This is what we mean:

In classical mechanics it is assumed that time is a constant that is observed the same for all viewers.
In special relativity time cannot be taken as a constant. Because the speed of light is the same for all observers, time-dilation occurs.

So, if you are getting a little lost it’s completely normal. We have a couple of examples of both classical mechanics and special relativity below:

Continue reading →

Monte Carlo and the Coding Tale

June 15, 2016July 25, 2016Leave a comment

By: Michelle Chen, Cameron Farrar, Laura O’Sullivan, and Cat Bassett

Introduction

Everything we do in life has a chance. That chance may come from picking the right card, picking a certain marble out of a bag or maybe deciding to give the first person who walks through a random door $100. Essentially,each chance has a certain trade-off of benefits. Often times we think about the chances as something will happen over the chance of something else taking place as we weigh possible outcomes. This is called risk analysis. One of the ways we can determine risk is we can use Monte Carlo simulations to replicate real life situations a large number of times in order to observe the long-term patterns without having the complications (cost, labor, materials, etc.) of manual repetition.

Continue reading →

Quantum Mechanics

June 30, 2017July 3, 2017Leave a comment

By Kathryn Benedict, Olivia Fugikawa, Denna Huang, and Eleanor McAdon

Intro

Quantum mechanics is a subfield of physics. Like with any other major area of study, physics is divided into many smaller categories. Classical physics is the main one, which includes Newton’s Laws of Motion and basic principles of mechanics, like inertia and friction. Things get weird when you delve into modern physics, which includes special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Special relativity deals with particles moving at the speed of light, general relativity works with incredibly massive objects and quantum mechanics is the physics of subatomic particles. This is what we worked on for the past two weeks and what our blog post is about!

Continue reading →

Mandelbrot Sets: the Magic of Math

June 30, 2017July 3, 2017Leave a comment

By Tara Collins, Michelle Escobar, Kayla Rollins, and Logan White

When you hear the phrase computational dynamics, what comes to mind?

Images of glasses-clad tech whizzes staring into screens?

Flowcharts, oceans of coffee, and lightbulb moments?

Utter computer-related confusion?

The struggle of programming can be all too real.

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 →

Number Systems

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Miranda Copenhaver, Nancy Hindman*, Efiotu Jagun, and Gloria Su.

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

Number systems are how we represent numbers like 1, 32, and 75. We use the base ten (decimal) system for our numbers most of the time. It’s called base ten because it uses ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. But what if I told you that 1001101 and 4D both mean seventy-seven? Crazy, right? There are countless number systems, but today we will be focusing on two: hexadecimal (base sixteen) and binary (base two)!

As we’ve said before, the binary system is base two; it only uses 0 and 1. Since only 1 or 0 can be used, the placement of each digit is important. Computers use binary to store and transfer information. It is used in communication (Morse code, braille) and everything electronic like computers, lights, calculators, MP3s, MIDI, JPEG, etc.

Continue reading →

Classification of Surfaces

July 12, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a comment

by Camille Clark, Layke Jones, Aekta Kallepalli, Maya Mukerjee, and Caroline Zhou.

Euler Characteristics

Euler characteristics

Euler characteristics are defined by the equation V- E + F = 2 where V = number of vertices, E = number of edges or nodes, and F = number of faces. Sometimes though, the equation V – E + F = 2 does not work for all situations because the solution can give various outcomes due to the dimensions and simplicity of the object. If 2 objects are topologically the same, they will have the same Euler characteristics. For all simple polygons, the Euler characteristics equal one. Figures with holes don’t follow these conventions as the holes in these figures add additional faces and edges not proportional to the formulas for simple figures.

Continue reading →