November 20 – Razvan Gelca “Regular Polygons”

This Saturday, Dr. Razvan Gelca will come to Dallas to share his lecture, “Regular Polygons,”  covering their surprising properties, constructions and applications to Mathematical Olympiad Problems.

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January 30 – Razvan Gelca – Check the Extremes!

January 30, 2010 – Dr. Razvan Gelca - “Check the Extremes”

Dr. Gelca will show how to solve mathematical problems by looking at the largest or the smallest element.

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Invariants and Knot Theory Recap

Unfortunately, due to state MATHCOUNTS and other activities, many students missed Dr. Razvan Gelca’s excellent talk on Invariants and Knot Theory.  Thankfully Dr. Gelca has made his slides available for these important topics.

You will find several interesting problems and solutions in this first deck:  Razvan Gelca – Invariants1

The second set of slides deals with Knot Theory.  Knot Theory is a good illustration of the importance of pure math and the topics explored through math circles.  For hundreds of years mathematicians explored the various ways that a string or rope could be twisted around itself motivated by little more than intellectual curiosity.  Today, however, we are finding that the principles of Knot Theory are critical to some of the most important applied sciences such as molecular biology.  Razvan Gelca – Knots

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