Culture Night 2016 at the Department
Nearly 900 guests chose to spend time at the Culture Night 2016 at the H.C. Ørsted Institute where the departments of Mathematics, Chemistry and Computer Science had invited to activities all night.
Department of Mathematical Sciences offered lectures on infinity and paradoxes, a mystery race, chess and a quantum game, while our neighboring departments arranged a chemistry show, pirate coding and lectures on Facebook.
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From the mathematics booth schoolchildren were asked to find five posts with math problems, which they solved diligently and carefully. Sometimes with some assistance from some equally ambitious parents.
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Older guests with a taste for mental gymnastics could instead engage in a mystery-hunt, where they (like in the game Cluedo) should find a number of trails around the complex to find the kidnapped Professor Prime. To show the way 500 meters of red thread was laid out, leading participants through lecture halls and classrooms, down the basement, through the Mathematical Library, up on the fourth floor - and back again.
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Many people chose to take photos of the tasks with their smartphones so they could sit together afterwards and solve the puzzles. And the very tenacious did solve parts of or all of the puzzle.
The four speakers came from different sections of the Department. Niels Richard Hansen talked about the strange differences that may exist between various studies presented in the press - the paradox as a fundamental phenomenon in statistical analysis.
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Asger Törnquist talked about how infinite amounts and processes play a central role in modern mathematics while Mogens Bladt’s lecture was based on some surprising examples of probabilities from throwing dice, which form the basis for the modern insurance and financial mathematics.
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Matthias Christandl described the phenomena that underlie the coming quantum computers superiority over ordinary computers. He illustrated with a "Quantum Game" which cannot be won with the classic particles alone, but only with particles that are entangled in quantum theoretic sense.
After the lecture it was possible to test the Quantum Game in real life. Researchers from the new QMATH center had built a small quiz studio in the Quantum Corner.