IMAGINARY Newsletter #5

Mar. 5, 2015
Welcome to our fifth IMAGINARY Newsletter!

We start the new year with three new big projects each of which will run for the duration of a whole year. Read also about upcoming events in Portugal, Slovenia, Mexico, and Belgium, a film award, our translation project MaTiE, a new SURFER release and many more international collaborations.

Your IMAGINARY Team

PS: Please like and share our IMAGINARY Facebook page.

 

Content
  • Project IMAGINARY Israel
  • Project IMAGINARY Turkey
  • Project IMAGINARY in France
  • Several exhibitions in Belgium
  • IMAGINARY in Mexico
  • SURFER competition in Portugal
  • Open air exhibition in Slovenia
  • SURFER 1.2.2 released
  • Translation Project
  • Award for the film Glacial Mystery
  • Upcoming collaborations
  • Featured content

 

Project IMAGINARY Israel

On the occasion of the 50 year long diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel, the project IMAGINARY Israel was announced in conjuction with a visit by German Federal Minister of Education and Research Johanna Wanka at the Weizmann Institute of Science on Feburary 10. The project consists of two mathematics exhibitions for the general public and two workshops mainly for young mathematicians from Germany and Israel. In particular, IMAGINARY will be helping to organise the first two IMAGINARY exhibitions in Israel, with the first one taking place during the summer of 2015 at the Clore Garden of Science The Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the second one later on in 2015 in Tel Aviv.
IMAGINARY Israel is organized within the “Research in Germany” campaign of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the aim of strengthening the traditionally very good mathematical research collaborations between the two countries.

Project IMAGINARY Turkey

IMAGINARY is part of the German-Turkish Year of Science, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Science and Education (BMBF) as well. Its idea is to strengthen scientific ties between the two countries through jointly organizing mathematics exhibitions and through networking in the field of mathematics communication. On February 20, the Turkish version of the IMAGINARY platform was launched. Within the project, we will also translate some of the available software and exhibits. There will be several interactive exhibitions in Turkey, the first one opening April 29 in Istanbul, followed by a second exhibition in Istanbul in May, and one in October in Izmir. There are further plans for exhibitions in Ankara and Diyarbakır, as well as school projects and media events. We want to connect scientific and public partners and to establish long term collaborations.

Project IMAGINARY France

The IMAGINARY in France project, which started in December last year and is funded by Cap’Maths, is developing. A first exhibition will take place in Marseille’s Vieux Port March 20 - 22. At this amazing location people from all aspects of life pass by during day and night! This first Marseille exhibition will be held at the same time as the Forum des Mathématiques Vivantes. This Forum is an initiative to raise math awareness among the general public, on all levels of education and beyond. The official launch of the French version of the IMAGINARY platform is scheduled for March 21 2015.

Several IMAGINARY exhibitions in Belgium

Several IMAGINARY exhibitions will take place in Belgium - Antwerp, Brussels, Diepenbeek, Ghent, Kortrijk and Leuven! The travelling IMAGINARY exhibition is an initiative of the Vlaamse Wiskunde Olympiade (Flanders Mathematics Olympiad) in cooperation with the universities in Flanders. For more information have a look at the Belgian website.

IMAGINARY in Mexico

The University of Hermosillo, Sonora (UNISON) hosted the first IMAGINARY exhibition in Mexico in early March 2015, which was part of the 25th National Week of Investigation and Teaching in Mathematics. A neat selection of images, 3D-sculptures and didactical prototypes of surfaces was shown as UNISON’s first step towards a museum dedicated to mathematics. There is also going to be a big exhibition at the Science museum of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) from September to December this year.

SURFER Competition in Portugal

The Public Library Biblioteca Lúcio Craveiro da Silva in Braga and the Mathematics and Applications Department of The University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) are organizing a SURFER competition, which challenges the participants to create new images of algebraic surfaces generated with our SURFER program. The competition runs from January the 17th to August the 31st. Everybody is invited to take part. The submission of the images can be individual or from a group. The images can be submitted at http://imaginary-exhibition.com/concurso-braga/.

Open air IMAGINARY exhibition in Slovenia

An open air exhibition opened March 2 with 22 big format images (120×180 cm) along the Ljubljanica river in the centre of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition is prepared by Mathema. The goal is to create a travelling exhibition around Slovenia, which will later also include an interactive part.

SURFER 1.2.2 released

A new SURFER version has been released on March 5, which includes a brand new Turkish localization. It is now possible to add new translations without source code modifications which makes things a lot easier and saves a lot of time for both, developers and translators. In addition, startup time and rendering speed have been improved considerably.

Translation Project

The Mathematics Translations in Europe (MaTiE) project is a collaborative project of popular mathematics communicators within Europe. It started in 2013 and works on establishing a network of media, translating selected articles published by the network partners into European languages and sharing the translated articles within the network partners.
Are you an online or print publisher of popular mathematics articles in Europe? Or do you have published artilces you think other countries might be intersted in and would be willing to offer them to be translated? Please contact us to become our partner at MaTiE@imaginary.org.

Award for the film ‘Glacial Mystery’

The new film Glacial Mystery by IMAGINARY member Guillaume Jouvet and his team won the first price of the Fast Forward Science competition within the category ‘substance’, which focusses on transfer of scientific knowledge, thorough research and systematic investigation - besides entertainment of course. The film is availbale in English and German.

Upcoming Collaborations

We are planning many more collaborations, such as for instance in Great Britain, South Africa, Senegal, Australia, Taiwan, Uruguay, China and Germany. We will inform you in our next newsletters as well as on our platform and via our facebook channel.

Featured Content

IMAGINARY user Arnaud Chéritat created a 3D model of the Boy Surface consisting only of pieces, which are parts of either planes, cylinders, tori or a sphere, and they have been cut by intersecting with planes or cylinders. This way it is possible to make a smooth model of the Boy Surface with simple primitives using Constructive Solid Geometry (and smooth meaning there is a tangent everywhere, and it varies continuously with the point).