MAT 401, Mathematical Vignettes from Nature. See the Syllabus.
Long have humans been enamored by the ”unreasonable” effectiveness of Mathematics for describing the Natural world. This course aims, through a series of vignettes, to give some examples of this effective- ness for a set of basic yet surprising phenomena. Topics may include a priori deductions on the shape of the earth, why a rainbow appears as it does, how to bottle sunshine, how to stabilize an inverted pendulum, and so on.
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