Wunderkammern

For me this is a wonderful view of abstraction, that had gone into model making, to help those less inclined to "the visonistic qualities of those same abstractions."

Shown here are the models in the mathematical wunderkammer located in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona. Like those in most modern mathematics departments, the collection is a combination of locally-made student and faculty projects together with a variety of commercially produced models. Sadly, a century since their Golden Age, many of the models are in disrepair and much of their documentation has been lost. However, some recent detective work, with the help of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has helped the department identify models by the American educators W. W. Ross and R. P. Baker in the collection.

So having been allowed through internet developement to understand the work of fifth dimensional qualites could exist (why Thomas Banchoff must be added below), has far exceeded the understanding of those currently engaged in the mathematics? I do not mean to undermine or cast uncertainty in the direction of those who are helpijng us, but make for recognition of what technology has done for us, in the use of these internet capabilities.

Long before the advent of the World-Wide Web, Tom Banchoff was experimenting with ways of using electronic media to enhance mathematical research and aid in mathematical education. Banchoff helped install one of the first mathematics computer labs in the country, and continues to lead the development of innovative geometric software and curricula for undergraduate mathematics courses. He uses computer graphics as an integral part of his own research, and has used mathematical videos for the last 30 years as a means of disseminating his results.

I have been exploring these issues in regards to the Sylvester Surfaces, and the relationship seen in matrix development. It wasn't without some understanding that "isomorphic images" might have been revealled in orbital images categories, that dealing with this abstract world, didn't require some explanation?

The Magic Square



The picture below was arrived using the applet given from that site. What did you have do to change, in order to get the image I did? We are given possibilties?



But of course I am held by the physics of the world we see. As small as, might have exemplified itself in some larger cosmological imagery of a kind, can it be suited to topological features spoken too in string theory?

We know Max Tegmark has refuted the soccerball universe, and bazeian valuation of a quantum gravity model, that seem to good to be true? PLato, still felt that this soccer ball represented God? So maybe baezian, interpretaion, although derived from archimeadean, was more then the models through which they were precribed in Wunderkammen. Something ancient has been brought forward again for the mind bogglers that like to paly in these abstract spaces?

Mathematical Teaching Tools

Introduction: Lost Geometry

When I was small, growing up in Wisconsin, I loved to walk along the railroad tracks. As I walked, I would watch the steel rails grow from a point in the distance ahead of me, sweep around me, and then disappear again in the distance over my shoulder, converging slowly back to a point. The pure geometry of it was breathtaking. What impressed me the most, however, was the powerful metaphor that it suggested: How wide the present seemed, simply because of my presence there; how small the future and the past. And yet, I could move along the tracks, imagining myself expanding and contracting the infinite timeline of history. I could move ahead until any previous place along that continuum had shrunk to insignificance, and I could, despite the relentless directionality that I imagined moving along the tracks like so many schedule-bound trains, drift backwards as easily as I could let myself be carried forward.

The wonderful stories exemplifed by human experience, places me in states of wonder. About how processes in geometry could have engaged us in a real dialogue with nature's way around us. To see these stories exemplified above. One more that quickly came to mind, was Michio Kaku's view from the bridge, to the fish in the pond. Looking at the surface from two perspective sseem really quite amazing to me.

Such exchanges as these are wonderful exercises in the creation of the historical abstract. A Lewis Carroll in the making? An Abbotsolutely certainty of math structures, that we would like to pass on to our children and extend the nature to matter of the brain's mass?