Past

Beautiful Maths: Beyond the 3rd Dimension with Blake

This class has passed
This class has passed

What’s it all about?

We (seemingly) live in a three dimensional world – three different directions that we can move in: up/down, left/right and forward/back. But there is a chance we are either too small or too large to perceive any extra dimensions that might exist. Whilst we cannot visualise these possible extra dimensions we can still explore them using beautiful tools from a mathematical subject called “Bundle Theory”.

What will we cover?

We will learn about these tools called “bundles” by first building one with our very own hands using a paper model. Once we are comfortable with the bundles which we can see in our three dimensional world, we will begin exploring bundles in higher dimensions. The tale that these bundles will take us on will lead us to one of the most beautiful mathematical objects that exists: the Hopf bundle (see the colourful picture). This bundle describes an intimate connection between the circle, the sphere and its higher dimensional cousin: the hyper-sphere!

We will have fun and engaging multiple choice questions throughout the talk which you can answer on your smart phone as a way to test your intuition about these strange higher-dimensions. We will also have many pictures and animations to help you see what is going on.

Blake SimsWho will be teaching?

Blake is a university and high school mathematics tutor, also finishing a late masters at the University of Melbourne in Pure Mathematics.

He is deeply passionate about helping people see the beauty in mathematics. He does this by teaching complex topics in an easy-to-understand way, and by teaching students via carefully curated questions; aimed to get the students engaged and interested in the material.