| 2023 Dr Simon Marais Memorial Public Lecture: Getting a handle on low-dimensional topology
Tuesday 7 November, Science demonstration from 5.30pm. Lecture will run from 6pm - 7pm
Have you ever wondered how to visualize higher dimensional space? While no one can actually picture 4 (or more) dimensions, mathematicians have developed tools that help us come close. Mathematicians who study spaces are known as topologists – topologists study locally simple but globally complex spaces, which are called manifolds. For example, the glaze on a doughnut is a 2-D manifold: if you zoom in it looks like a sheet of paper, but when you step back the space is more complex.
Associate Professor Lisa Piccirillo from the Department of Mathematics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States will introduce a toolkit for thinking about 3 and 4 dimensional manifolds. Think about the peel of a 4-dimensional orange and what 3-D space you would want to live in to enable teleportation. Free, registration essential
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