Friday, June 26, 2009

Friday

Today students worked in groups in the morning.

After lunch Peter Polyakov talked about Mathematical Modeling of Conductivity, this talk fit well with the overarching theme for the summer, that is discrete versus continuous. Peter first introduced his research in the discrete setting, then moved to the continuous setting (1 dimensional to 2 dimensional and beyond). Cloaking was another topic of Peter's talk as well as homogenization.

After this talk Bryan gave the students their goal for next week, they will be giving a more formal talk using Beamer next Thursday. The students will definitely rise to the occasion and we're all looking forward to the talks next Thursday.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Thursday

Students began this morning working on their projects.

After lunch Matt Leonard gave a riveting talk about knot theory! Students learned about the general properties of knots as well as some of the invariants that are known for knots. Some of the highlights were proof by roller coaster, tricoloring using the paint bucket, performing Reidemeister moves, and unknotting algebraic knots.

The students will be giving updates at 4:00 and we are looking forward to seeing their progress.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Wednesday

This morning students worked in groups.

After lunch Diana Spears gave a wonderful talk for the students about swarm robotics. The applications and problems seem to be such that research in this area will continue for years to come.

This weekend students are on their own. On Saturday Butch Cassady days will take place at the territorial prison, in west Laramie. The weather looks like it will be pretty nice, so hiking and biking are also good options.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Monday and Tuesday

Monday students worked in groups on their projects, it was beautiful and hopefully the weather will hold out for this weekend.

Tuesday morning was spent working in groups again. Tuesday afternoon I gave a really short presentation introducing beamer as a tool to give presentations. Hopefully this will help when it comes time to present the results from each of the projects.

Now students are working in their groups and will hopefully continue to make progress. Keep up the hard work everyone!