Maxwell's House

There once was the physicist Maxwell
whose theories of light didn't wax well
lo, equations he found
with a d little round
by checking his E & M facts well

Newton's Fall

There once was a fellow named Newton
who sat neath a pear tree bout noon-time
his head was then hit
by the fruit not the pit
which forced him to gravitate sublime

More grafitti

A Supertask Puzzle

A supertask is a countably infinite sequence of tasks to be performed in order, say

{T₁,T₂,T₃,...}

such that we first perform task T₁ and then task T₂ and so forth.

As an example one might consider the case of Zeno's Paradox where an arrow is shot at some target. The arrows first task is to complete the journey half way to the target. The second task is to complete the remaining journey half way to the target and so on.

Now consider the case of Jon Perez Laraudogoitia's beautiful supertask: There are a sequence of unit point mass balls stationary at x=1/2,x=1/4,x=1/8 and so on. A unit point mass at x=1 and time t=0 is moving with a velocity of 1 unit per second to the left (i.e. toward x=1/2).

We assume that there is an elastic collision at x=1/2 and so the moving ball is left stationary at x=1/2 and the ball at x=1/2 moves with velocity 1 unit per second in the direction of the ball at x=1/4. It is clear that at t=1 all the balls have been hit by the preceding ball.

Assuming that all the collisions are elastic and behave in exactly the same manner as the first collision, is there a ball that passes through x=0?

Sage Advice to be Given Jan. 14th

Patrick Coulton will give the first colloquium talk of the spring semester Friday January 14th. The topic will be "An introduction to using Sage".

Sage is a computer algebra system which is free and open source.
The talk will center on applications to the college classroom.

See the department website for more details.

A Philosophical Conudrum

If a tree falls into a black hole does it make a sound?

News from the Mathematics Castle

The new semester (spring) has begun. Classes started January 10th.
Andrew Mertz and family provided treats in the department lounge
to help start us off on the right foot.

Peter Andrews, Sylvia Carlisle and William Green attended the
joint AMS/MAA conference in New Orleans.

Peter was particularly disappointed in the beautiful weather
since the weather afforded no opportunity to play hockey.

The department will host a low dimensional topology conference on
March 26th. See the department website for more details.