MUSEUMS
The Human Tree exhibit allows visitors to become a work of fractal art
We’re one of the only science centres I know of that has opened with all of the exhibits designed completely from scratch. That was both a joy and a challenge.
pattern which is similar to itself on a smaller scale. There’s a rich landscape of fractals you can make just by varying the angles and length of your arms. Some of the key elements we use to
draw people in and show them the beauty and creativity of mathematics are right there: it’s visually beautiful, you see surprising patterns and you’re engaged with your entire body.
What was the biggest challenge of opening the museum? CL: We’re one of the only science centres I know of that has opened with all its exhibits designed completely from scratch. That was both a joy and a challenge. We had ideas contributed from mathematicians around the world, so our first challenge was whittling those down. Then we’d create drawings and a little storyline for each exhibit and go out to
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companies that might be able to build it. Some got thrown out because they were too expensive, others because the fabri- cator had no idea how to do it – but what one company would say was impossible, another would say, “Oh, that? Yes, we can do that.” GW: We ended up with eight different
contractors, when the advice was to have two or three. Managing all those different providers was a challenge.
Who or what made you love maths? GW: When I was in grade school, I didn’t like math. I found it came fairly easily to me and I got good grades, but I had no enthusiasm for it. Then one summer my parents sent me to a math camp. The very first weekend I broke my collarbone playing soccer, and from that point on I couldn’t do much apart from work on the problems set in our daily math classes.
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Somehow this answer would line up with that answer and I started to see pat- terns emerging. Then I’d get glimpses of the reasons for these structures and that would open up new vistas. I discovered that it was all really quite beautiful. Plus, I was in a community of peers who were just as excited by it as I was. So I fell in love with math, and have been in love with it ever since. CL: I enjoyed math as soon as I
realised it was something you could understand rather than just memorise, but it was a wonderful calculus teacher in high school who really made me feel that it could be beautiful.
Can you give some examples of how we use maths in everyday life? CL: Just trying to work out the most efficient order of all the errands you need to do is very mathematical.
AM 2 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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