Pi Mu Epsilon

Student Colloquium

Conway's Rational Tangles


by Prof. Philip B. Yasskin
Department of Math, Texas A&M University

Abstract: Four people stand in a square holding the ends of two ropes. There are two movements: Two people on one side trade places or all four rotate around. As they move, the ropes get tangled. It turns out that each tangle can be assigned a rational number and if you know this rational number, you can figure out how to untangle the ropes. For more information, see the article by Tom Davis on Conway's Rational Tangles at

http://www.geometer.org/mathcircles/tangle.pdf

The talk will consist of hands-on demonstrations of this idea and a discussion of the underlying mathematics. The ideas in this talk will be easily understandable by undergraduates.

  • Thursday November 4, 2010
  • Pizza at 6pm in LC 311
  • Talk at 6:30pm in LC 310

For more information visit
http://www.math.sc.edu/~pme/
We are on FaceBook.