FARGO, N.D. (FargoPhantom.com)–On Tuesday night at Babbs Coffee Shop the College of Science andMathematics at NDSU held its fourth “Science Café.”
There will be a fifth in April. with hopes of a more regular schedule during the
2009-2010 academic year. According to Dr. Kevin McCaul, the Dean of the
college, the meetings are held downtown to make them more informal and
more attractive to the general audience for which they are intended.
For this presentation, that strategy seem to have worked as nearly 100
were in attendance. I’m not sure of the exact purpose of these
meetings, but they certainly expose the adademics of NDSU and the
College of Science and Mathematics in particular to the general
population. I think this a good thing, and should have been done long
ago.
Tuesday night’s leader was Dr. Jim Coykendall, Professor and Chair of
the Mathematics Department. Professor Coykendahl has an impressive
liist of accomplishments, including his bachelors degree from Caltech
and phD from Cornell. He also held the James A. Meir junior
professorship, one of only two chaired professorships in the college.
Professor Coykendall’s discussion was about solving the Rubic’s cube,
and the presentation was certainly accessible to a general audience.
The discussion began with a little history of the Rubic’s cube and Jims
own experience with solving it.
With much participation from the audience, the astronomical number of
possibilities to attempt to solve the cube was demonstrated. Then Jim
discussed ways to go about forming strategies to solve the cube without
trying all possibilities. This led to a discussion, again with a lot
of audience participation, to the mathematical analysis of the
structure of permutations. A permutation of a number of objects is
simply an arrangement of those objects.
Professor Coykendall is from Tennessee originally, and his easy going
hill country delivery was easy to listen to. There were many questions
at the end, and all present seemed to enjoy themselves.
I think the Science Café’s an excellent opportunity to view NDSU’s
highly qualified faculty at work in a relaxed setting and can give us
some idea of what they do when they’re having fun. I hope they
continue to be so successful.
For more Info on when the next meeting email: