MUSEUMS
Among MoMath’s major sponsors was Google, which donated $2m (E1.4m, £1.2m) in 2011. In total, the internet giant awarded $12m (E8.7m, £7.2m) to seven science centres across the US and the UK in the same period. Each year, through its charitable arm, Google Giving, the company
donates $100m (E72.4m, £59.6m) in grants, 50,000 hours and $1bn (E724m, £596m) in products to good causes. These range from Global Impact Awards – focused on education and computer science; the environment; development; and empowering women and girls – to
Community Impact Awards, cover- ing not only disaster relief but also deserving non-profit organisations in the countries where Google is based. Community initiatives include the
Roberta Initiative, Germany; the restoration of Bletchley Park, UK; and The High Line, New York City.
When you get it, the pieces fit together conceptually in your
brain and you have a new perspective. You look at the world in a slightly different way than you did before that moment.
need any help with that let me know.” I thought, “What fun!” In my career I didn’t do anything focused on math, then sud- denly here was this project that sounded like all play and no work.
What’s the aim of the museum? GW: Our mission is to change public perceptions of mathematics and share its evolving, creative, dynamic, beautiful nature. These are not words people asso- ciate with mathematics, but they give a much better description of what it really is than the ones most people would use.
Before MoMath, you launched a touring exhibition called the Math Midway. Tell us about that CL: We got together a group of sympathetic people and held monthly meetings. Then Glen met someone involved with the World Science Festival in New York City, who said we could have a booth, and I volunteered to spearhead that initiative. I thought I’d be sitting at a table handing out brochures, but Glen’s vision was to build an exhibit that would have a life beyond the festival, that would travel to other science centres around the country and be a sort of proof of concept for us. Out of that came the Math Midway, which has been travelling the country without a break since June 2009, and was in fact an excellent proof of concept. We had 3,000 to 4,000 people show up on the first day. So it really showed us, and showed people considering investing in the project, that it had legs.
AM 2 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
The museum cost $23m. How easy was it to raise the money? GW: I don’t know that raising money is ever easy. You have to get people to share your passion and vision, get them excited, and try to meet as many people as possible. We were fortunate that our vision, and the fact that we’re the only institution of our kind in North America, resonated with some people.
What are the most popular exhibits in the museum? CL: The one that’s got the lion’s share of attention is the Square-Wheeled Trike. It’s just such a surprising thing. We all know square wheels don’t roll. So the fact that mathematics can teach you to create a track on which a square wheel will roll just as smoothly as a round wheel does on a flat surface is shocking to people, and they will line up for the opportunity to try it out for themselves. Another is the Enigma Café, a puzzle
area that’s designed to feel like a café. It’s amazing how many people gather in there and how long they spend. GW: One of the reasons we wanted the Enigma Café is that for folks to get into math, puzzles are one of the biggest hooks. You get your teeth sunk into a knotty problem and you want to know the solution. And when you get it, the pieces fit together conceptually in your brain – or physically in the case of a puzzle – and you have a new perspective: you look at the world in a slightly different way than you did before that moment.
Which exhibit or exhibits best sum up what you’re trying to achieve? CL: What people miss about mathematics is that it has a lot of depth: you might not like long division, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some part of math that can speak to you. And there are concepts in math that can speak to people at different levels. For me, the exhibit that best exemplifies that is String Product. It’s a giant paraboloid – a paraboloid is the curve you get when you throw a ball in the air – rotated to make a long bowl; it has lots of strings running through it and when you press numbered buttons they light up. A toddler will press the buttons and get
the sense that numbers are fun. Slightly older children will notice that when they press five and six, the string connecting them happens to cross the centre point at 30 – so they realise they’re looking at something beautiful that somehow conveys the multiplication table. Kids who have finished algebra and know a little bit about geometry can sit down with the equation of a paraboloid and the equation of a line and work out why that has to happen. And even mathemati- cians who see the exhibit and didn’t know about that property are delighted by it. GW: For me, it’s the Human Tree. A
camera picks up your image and pro- jects it onto a screen, but replaces your arms with a smaller picture of you, and the arms of that smaller picture with yet another picture of you, and so on, pro- ducing a pattern known as a fractal – a
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