25/04/2019

'IMPA Open Doors' debuts with lectures and games

Marcelo Viana dá as boas-vindas aos visitantes: matemática para todos

When asked “Who here has heard of IMPA?”, just over ten hands went up in the auditorium where, this Thursday (25), the Director-General of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Marcelo Viana, welcomed visitors to the 1st edition of “IMPA Open Doors”. But when he asked about OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools), practically everyone raised their arms.

"From now on, you all know that IMPA is the organization behind OBMEP," explained Viana, before adding that the institute is also responsible for selecting the Brazilian teams that participate in international mathematics olympiads.

In the chat that opened the activities of the first day of the visitor program, Viana spoke about IMPA's missions to the audience, made up of students from four schools in Rio and Niterói – Colégio Estadual Compositor Luiz Carlos da Vila, Colégio Paulo Freire, Escola Municipal Equador and Colégio Pedro II Campus São Cristóvão – and exhibitors of the playful activities carried out at the event.

Jogos de tabuleiros de várias partes do mundo

After mentioning research in Mathematics and the training of researchers, Viana emphasized that the "IMPA Open Doors" program is part of the institute's third mission, which is to disseminate mathematical knowledge.

During the conversation, the director-general of IMPA inquired about Brazil's most recent achievement in the Mathematics Olympiad. A student from Colégio Pedro II Campus São Cristóvão spoke about the victory in the EGMO, the European Olympiad for girls, held this month. The country brought home three medals, one of them gold, won by 17-year-old Mariana Groff.

Várias possibilidades para despertar o raciocinio lógico

"We are also going to launch a competition in Brazil specifically for girls," said the director-general of IMPA, regarding the Girls in Mathematics Tournament, an initiative to encourage female students' participation in the Olympiads.

Before handing over the programming to researcher Diego Nehab, from the computer graphics area at IMPA, Viana joked with the students. For those who weren't lucky enough to find the paper in the blue envelope left on each chair that guaranteed a plush mascot for the 2017-2018 Mathematics Biennium, he offered the solution: "Those who didn't win have to come back here."

Throughout the morning, the students learned how to do computer typography, the topic of Nehab's lecture. The researcher went back in time to the year 1430 to recount details about the creation of a Bible that took a hundred years to complete.

Next, Nehab went through Johannes Gutenberg's (1400-1468) movable type and presented a page he had produced himself. "Since the computer can only handle numbers, each letter needs to be represented by a code," he explained about the work.

Pesquisador do IMPA, Rosenberg falou sobre a matemática nas bolhas de sabão

Harold Rosenberg, a researcher at IMPA in the area of differential geometry, showed students that there is mathematics in fleeting soap bubbles. They are characterized by being the surfaces with the smallest area among all the surfaces bounded by a given closed curve in space. These are called minimal surfaces, which he presented in a video.

Theory was followed by practice. The students enjoyed the activities presented at the Mathematics Office, by Professor Humberto Bortolossi from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), and at the Games Around the World exhibition, by Silvia Barbosa Nunes. She brought a series of board game challenges from Campinas (SP), ranging from well-known games like Solitaire and Checkers to Mancala, an African game.

For Marcelo Miranda, a 9th-grade student at the Equador Municipal School, the most interesting objects were the curious dice, of various colors and shapes, and the gravity well. Although young, the boy says he already has his future planned. “My dream is to be a math teacher and do a master's degree in the USA. I'm already studying English.”

Marcelo Miranda, estudante do 9º ano da Escola Municipal Equador, segurando seus dados curiosos favoritos

Michelle Guimarães, Marcelo's teacher, says that opening IMPA to schools has a dual purpose. "While it demystifies mathematics and shows that it can be fun, it also introduces students to the reality of the academic world."

Before the match, visitors watched videos from the UFF Mathematics Film Club and faced the challenge of coloring maps with up to four colors. Who said Mathematics isn't fun? This Friday (26), there's more “IMPA Open Doors”.