Frank Morgan

Undergraduate STEM Education Report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)

On February 7, PCAST released Engage to Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates with Degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  “This report provides a strategy for improving STEM education during the first two years of college that we believe is responsive to both the challenges and the opportunities that this crucial stage in the STEM education pathway presents. Economics projections point to a need for approximately 1 million more STEM professionals than the US will produce at the current rate over the next decade if the country is to retain its historical preeminence in science and technology. To meet this goal, the United States will need to increase the number of students who receive undergraduate STEM degrees by about 34% annually …”

Response by the Mathematical Association of America

Note added 19 June 2012. In his Launchings, David Bressoud concluded that, “In short, the problem is not with attracting students to STEM fields. The issue will be to retain them.”

The Weaire-Phelan soap bubble foam counterexample to Kelvin’s Conjecture is the latest art exhibit on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (photo from New York Times article). It is conjectured to divide space into unit-volume chambers with the least amount of material. It was also used for the Beijing Olympic Water Cube. For more on the Kelvin Conjecture, see my blog at the Huffington Post.

Note added 8 July 2012. Rob Kusner pointed out this canopy, designed by Giancarlo Mazzanti, in Bogotá, Columbia, reported by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times.

The 2012 Lehigh University Geometry-Topology Conference was as warm and welcoming as ever. Here’s a photo from the final day.

Car Talk Saturday, May 26, announced me as the winner of the Puzzler. As they did on Saturday, January 25, 2004. For the same puzzle. Which I never answered. At that time I wrote to my congratulatory friends:

Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 08:21:35 -0500
Dear Friends,

It was great to hear from you about a curious announcement on Car Talk yesterday of my winning the Puzzler, curious since I did not even submit an answer to that particular question! I have six theories, successively less plausible: Continue reading ‘I win Car Talk puzzler again?’ »

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’ »

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. Continue reading ‘ICMS “Isoperimetric Problems…” 19-22 March 2012 Edinburgh’ »