ICMS “Isoperimetric Problems…” 19-22 March 2012 Edinburgh
ICMS workshop on “Isoperimetric problems, space filling, and soap bubble geometry” in Edinburgh, Scotland, March 19-22, 2012, described in my Huffington Post blog on “Soap Bubbles in Scotland”; research blog.
Video of Simon Cox, Aberystwyth University, organizer.
More photographs, including the official participants photo. When I gave a talk on “Soap Bubbles and Mathematics” at Dynamic Earth for some 60 high school students from Auchmuty and Falkirk high schools, they laughed when I said “double bubble.” Apparently this is the latest slang for “cool” or “sick” in from London.
Workers in geometric measure theory, numerical computation, and foam structure and applications pursue optimum cellular structures. Questions include:
– What are the main difficulties in trying to use the method of proof of Hales’s 2001 Hexagonal Honeycomb Theorem to prove that the Kelvin cell provides the least-area tiling of space by a single protocell? Can similar tools be used to say anything about the two-cell Weaire-Phelan structure and its conjectured optimality?
– What are the optimal numerical procedures for determining conjectured minimizers for finite tilings? To what extent can they aid proofs of optimality?
– Where can this mathematics best make an impact: in packing, in biology, etc.
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