Frank Morgan

On May 30, 1984, while at MIT I appeared in a short segment on the nationally syndicated “PM Magazine” TV show:

Walked this Easter morn as far as you can drive up the old Petersburg Road without hiking the rest of the way to Petersburg Pass. Williamstown is just a dim memory in the distance. The old tree marks the spot.

Karoly Bezdek has proved that a partition of space into convex polyhedra of bounded diameters containing unit balls has average surface area at least 24/√3 ~ 13.86 and conjectures that the minimum is 12√2 ~ 16.97, given by rhombic dodecahedra. Ken Brakke has computed that if one allows arbitrary cells containing unit balls, the rhombic dodecahedra still beat the Kelvin (~17.83) and Weaire-Phelan (~21.15) foams, but they can morph into a “draped Williams cell” (thumbnail at right from nice picture at Brakke) with average area about 16.957, conjectured to be optimal.

Select episodes of my live call-in MathChat TV show are now available on YouTube:

February 11, 1996 with co-host Eric Watson ’97

March 2, 1996 with co-host Aaron Dupuis ’99

April 13, 1997 with special guest Benoit Mandelbrot

October 6, 1997 with special guest John Conway, at Princeton University

November 24, 1997 with special guest Freeman Dyson, at Princeton University

The first three are at Williams on Willinet.

Also check out my MathChat column archive and my Math Chat book. Continue reading ‘MathChat Videos’ »

After the week-long soap bubble conference in Scotland, I spent the rest of spring break in my hometown, visiting my mom and enjoying the arrival of spring, exemplified by the pink blossoms of the cherry trees. We attended a fundraising dinner by the new Allentown School District Foundation, with excerpts from school spring musicals. They sponsor all kinds of creative programming in the schools. Their greatest current need is funding for a director.

It’s always hard to leave. On the way back to Williams I wrote the following poem:

Continue reading ‘Allentown School District Foundation’ »