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Math Club / Pi Mu Epsilon |
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| Math Club Officers: |
President Chelsey Riehl, Vice-president Marissa Saladin, Treasurer Noah Armstrong, Secretary Carey Mayhew, Assistant to the President Kailey Dani |
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| Meeting Dates |
| The officers and advisors are planning our monthly meetings for 2012 - 2013. We have alumni and area professionals giving career talks and student talks. The movie nights are back. Game Day is pretty much every Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Math Department (Academic Building, Room 50), where we play all sorts of strategy games from Ticket to Ride and Dominion to King's Breakfast. All events are open to the Aquinas community. |
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| Club News |
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We did it again! The PME Journal offered a Calculus Art contest and Aquinas was one of two winners. No prize, but our entry was printed in the Fall 2011 issue. At left is how our stereoscopic pair looks in color. (The print in the issue is black and white.) To get the depth effect, focus above the pair and get the two little dark dots to align. You’re trying to get the left image to go to your left eye and the right image to your right eye. >See the published results in the PME Journal (pdf) |
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The Math Club's entry won the Pi Mu Epsilon Anniversary Badge contest! Their winning design is pictured at right. >More
Description of the symbolism on the badge: The six gold arcs are orthogonal to the inner circle and each other, forming a regular hyperbolic hexagon, if we take the inner circle for the boundary. The three lavender arcs pass through pairs of antipodal points on the outer circle (though this relationship might be lost when the badges are mounted.) The lavender arcs also form a Realeaux triangle inside the inner circle. The inner circle has half the area of the outer circle, (Euclidean measure). The Euclidean equilateral triangle in violet anchors the entire structure and the Greek letters down the middle of the triangle are meant to invoke the PME Key. One of our students remarked about the position of the letters ME, "That's me in the honor society!" |
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The Math Club's entry in the Fall Fest, Andrew Borgman as a Mocko Jumbie with Scale Factor 1.5 was the winner.
Andrew is pictured at left shaking hands with Dr. Ed Balog. |
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| There must be something about being
Math Club President because our last three have had some
good math rewards in their lives. Former pres.
Sara Schmidt (Koster) scored a job with the Dept of Defense.
Former pres. Paul T. Wood has passed the first five Actuarial
Exams and he's with Gabriel, Roeder, Smith and Co. in
Chicago. Val Kunde, won a prestigious Miriam Schaefer
scholarship. Past president, Jeanne Gilewski, is in med school having completed her triple major of math, chemistry
and biology at AQ. |
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| Math Club Projects |
| We have a series of images of mostly math topics, done stereoscopically. We use AutoDesk's 3DStudio to set up virtual cameras viewing a mesh object similar to the way a person's two eyes would view the object. Using a stereoscopic viewer, one can then fool the brain into thinking the object exists and is being viewed in depth, just the way a Viewmaster works. The images below require a device to project one image onto each eye separately, unless the viewer is willing to try to focus eyes separately until the images become one. Such viewing is possible, with practice. To see a page which has some excellent stereoscopic images and has free-viewing helpers, try 3dArtist. |
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| For the easiest results, get the $2 viewer (stock number 2018, $3 shipping) from Reel3D. Then, print the images you want to use, cut them out and place them next to each other while looking through the viewer. You will soon see the intended stereoscopic image. The viewer also works on the computer screen for some people; but using prints is best. |
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The image pair at left is a five-crossing knot built in a box. (There are some trivial crossings present. The knot is a "paramecium" knot, as described by Jozef Przytycki of The George Washington University.) |
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| The two pairs at right are from a model of a finite geometry. The model has 10 points, 10 lines and illustrates Desargues's Theorem. (The purple line is the polar of the lowest blue point.) |
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Pi Mu Epsilon |
| Membership Requirements |
| Neither a math major or minor is required to be in PME; but taking the calculus sequence and beyond usually means one of these has happened. Membership is most difficult at the sophomore level, where the prospective member must be a math major with at least three math courses taken, including Calculus I. The sophomore must have a 4.0 in math and be in the top fourth of that student's class. |
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| For students above sophomore level, the requirements are more adaptable. Four math courses including the calculus sequence is the big hurdle because the calculus sequence is three courses long. The prospective member must have a B average in math and must be in the top third of the class. One further requirement for all prospective PME members: you must be a Math Club member as well. The Math Club contains the honor society as well as providing participants with mathematical activities outside the classroom. To be a member of the Math Club, all you have to do is attend three Math Club meetings! So, for you successful math students at Aquinas College, check it out! You might just be able to increase your mathematics enjoyment, boost your resume and have some fun all at the same time. >>Learn more about the installation of PME |
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Induction Ceremony - April 21, 2012
Pictured, left to right:
Ian MacNeil, Tyler Nadeau, Melissa Goulet, Nick Thelen, Mike Gagnon, Evan Jacob Garcia, Michelle Sereday and Andrew Libs |
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