MaCAW x PASA Student Seminars on Friday! (Math)
Hello everyone,
MaCAW, in collaboration with PASA, is proud to be hosting our second student seminar session this Friday, April 2nd from 5:00 to 6:30. These seminars are short 10 - 15 minute presentations given by fellow undergraduates, in topics related to physics or mathematics. Attending is a great way to learn what your peers have been working on this semester, as well as be exposed to subjects you might not have otherwise seen. The presentation titles and abstracts are as follows:
5:00 - 5:15
Max Sun - Electric Field Simulation with Open Source Software
I'm simulating 3D electric fields for my thesis. I found many useful and general tools to improve my workflow along the way. I'll do a quick showcase on tools for the following, with focus on open source:
* PDE solver, physics simulation
* Literature review
* Reference management
* Note taking, report writing
* Text editors
* Reproducible results
5:15 - 5:30
Jillian Psotka - NEOSSat Observation Planning
A talk about my experience as an intern at the Canadian Space Agency. I am in charge of the planning and scheduling of observations on NEOSSat, one of Canada's microsatellites. I get data of exoplanet transits, comets, and asteroids for various astronomers across Canada.
5:30 - 5:45
Lewis Glabush - Galois Theory: Ruler and Compass Constructions
I will explore a few of the basic constructions possible with ruler and compass, which were the primary object of study for the ancient Greek Mathematicians. Then I will speak about which constructions are possible. The study of fields was eventually able to show which constructions are possible and which are impossible, with necessary and sufficient conditions related to field extensions. In particular, we will consider the constructability of a regular n-gon and its relation to cyclotomic field extensions.
5:45 - 6:00
Mahima Siali - Special Relativity: 5 Steps of Mathematical Formulation
Special relativity discusses the relation between space and time in non-accelerating reference frames. Being one of the newer major theories in physics, its development was very casual – moving from experimental evidence (the Michelson-Morley experiment) and justification from the theory of electromagnetism, to increasingly sophisticated mathematical models to visualize and verify the concepts. Today we’ll be focusing on one major finding from special relativity, the Lorentz transformation, from its initial conception, to Minkowski diagrams, to its tensor and four-vector representation.
6:00 - 6:15
Ningsong Shen - Linear Hashing Explained
The hash tables that we learn about in introductory CS courses are fast and very useful. But they are static, and cannot be resized. This is insufficient for many situations, where data grows and shrinks rapidly. This presentation will describe a ‘dynamic hashing’ method called linear hashing that addresses the issue.
6:15 - 6:30
Amar Venga - An Introduction to Splitting Fields
An irreducible polynomial is a polynomial that cannot be written as the product of two other polynomials. Taking the splitting field of an irreducible polynomial is a way to factor the polynomial into linear terms, thereby making the polynomial reducible. This talk will give a non-rigorous introduction to these topics, discuss their importance, and cover some preliminary results about splitting fields.
Zoom details will be sent the day of. Everyone is free to attend, even if you are not in mathematics or physics (so invite your friends!). The presentations cover a wide variety of topics, so you are bound to learn something interesting! We hope to see you there.
