Podcasts
It's Not Just Numbers returns with Season 2 this November. This monthly podcast features interviews with mathematicians, exploring the depth of their field while addressing common stereotypes and biases. Our aim is to demystify mathematics by showcasing its human side and offering insights into the lives of mathematicians.
If you're new to the show, we encourage you to catch up on our previous episodes. For more information about our podcast and its mission, check out our interview with The Aperiodical.
Degrees of Freedom is a podcast exploring the landscape of higher education. Through thoughtful dialogues with students, lecturers, and experts, we examine diverse theoretical, philosophical, and practical aspects of education.
Our discussions aim to provide insights into contemporary educational challenges and innovations. Season 4, which began in September 2024, continues this tradition with a new episode on curiosity.
New episodes are released approximately every six weeks, offering regular opportunities for listeners to engage with important educational topics.
Seminars
- 2023--2025. Co-organizer of YAG Pub Lectures.
- Public Talk. A mathematician looks at the sky: order and chaos in the dance of the planets. (2023, YAG Pub Lectures [video recording]; 2024, Noorderzon)
- 2024, May. Interview for the Bernoulli Institute [link]
- 2024, April. Interview for The Aperiodical over our It's Not Just Numbers podcast.
- 2023, November. Panelist for the OSCG discussion The internalization of public engagement: challenges, hurdles and opportunities.
- 2023, March. Panelist for The Future of Higher Education: Launch Symposium of the Centre for Learning and Teaching. University of Groningen. [link to my initial comment]
- 2022, July. Guest for the Degrees of Freedom episode Failing forward (S1E07).
- 2021, January. The geometry of falling cats, parallel parking and bike rides. FMF.
- 2021, November. Research Minutes for the inauguration at the Young Academy Groningen. [link]
Other Activities
Oscillations book
This book is an introduction to the mathematics of oscillations, useful as a general introduction to dynamical systems and hamiltonian mechanics. The main difference from most other textbooks on the subject is that the main body of the book, only uses basic knowledge of calculus and trigonometry, and as such should be suitable for young bachelor students. Similarly, the first three appendices and the solutions to the exercises are also meant to be accessible, even if slightly more advanced. The other appendices, instead, are aimed at curious readers who let themselves be provoked by new ideas. In particular we think of more advanced students and their teachers. For mathematical background we often refer to the extensive bibliography.
The book is still in draft form, and we are looking for feedback from the readers. You can download the book in PDF format by clicking on the link below.
H. Broer, M. Seri, F. Takens: Oscillations: swings and vibrations from a mathematical viewpoint [draft pdf].
Spectre, Hats and Maths
This activity has been developed in collaboration with ScienceLinX and Leen van Wijngaarden for the Zpannend Zernike festival on October 6 2024.
Aperiodic monotiles have been discovered in 2023 and released for open use under a creative common attribution license: you can find all information on the Spectre tile here and on its sister tile, the Hat tile here. An entertaining and educational introduction to what they are and the mathematics behind them can be found on Scientific Amarican, in an article from one of the discoverers themselves: Inside Mathematicians’ Search for the Mysterious ‘Einstein Tile’.
This activity is a hands-on workshop where participants play with the monotiles to construct a super-tile. We use two cutely decorated and coloured tiles (the bright turtles in the photo below) as references to follow our bluperints and let the participant draw what they want on the other tiles. In this way, the activity remains accessible to all ages and backgrounds, and provides a playful way to introduce the concept of aperiodic tiling to a broad audience. Outside the room, we also had a laser cutter constantly producing new tiles, allowing the participants to experience the whole process, from cutting the paper to the wall.
Each personalized supertile was assembled in a super-super tile on a table nearby. The participants came with us and decide where they want their tile to be located, following our blueprint. Once the super-super tile is ready, we move it to the wall, where it contributes to the final super-super-super tile on the wall.
With 5 hours and the help of hundreds of participants, we covered a wall patch of 657 artistic spectre tiles! This was a full super-super-super tile, an additional super-super tile and a few extra super tiles. One group did create a super tile by flipping two of the tiles, can you spot it on the photo? We decided to keep it as it was, as it was a nice touch to the final result.
The activity was very fun and engaging, and we received a lot of positive feedback from the participants. It was nice to see people coming back at the end of the day to see where their artworks ended up on the wall, and take pictures with it. You can view some of the pictures of the event at this link, unfortunately I did not ask for permission to the participants so I can only show you the ones where people are not present.
In the same spirit of the original discoverers of the monotiles, we decided to release all of our materials for free use under the same Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. We hope that this will help other groups to organize similar events and spread the enjoyiment of mathematics to a broader audience.
You can download all the materials developed for our event, including all the blueprints and the turtles spectres, in PDF format, clicking on the links below.
