Diana Davis
Swarthmore College
October 23, 2019 (Wed.)
11:00 – 11:50 am
SCP 229
Periodic billiard paths on the regular pentagon
Abstract:
Imagine that you hit a ball in a pentagon-shaped billiard table, and after bouncing around for a while, the ball comes back to where it started and then repeats its path. I’ve been studying these “periodic” paths for a couple of years, and it turns out that they’re very beautiful, like mathematical art. I’ll show lots of pictures, and explain the math behind them.