Outreach

For everyone who is not a mathematician, the papers and talks linked elsewhere on this site are most likely gibberish. On this page you can find some more accessible things

Videos

In 2021, Inspired by the Summer of Math Exposition contest by 3blue1brown, I made an educational video on the mathematics behind rainbows. It communicates visually (without formulas) how the true story is more complicated but also more beautiful than “different wavelengths reflect at different angles”:

 

In 2022 I produced a video about the pattern of waves making up the wake of a ship or a duck. This is a common topic in university-level fluid mechanics courses, but my intention was to give a fairly complete explanation without assuming any knowledge beyond high school maths:

This video received an honorable mention in the 2022 Summer of Math Exposition.

 

In October 2022 I appeared in a 24-hour maths game show, with a 30 minute segment on a 1-dimensional version of Conway’s Game of Life. You can still watch the recording and play with copy of the google spreadsheet.

Blog posts

If you want to get an idea about my research area, have a look at blog posts below. There is a lot of maths between what is taught in school and the highly specialised topics of today’s research. In fact, these intermediate levels contain some exciting insights that aren’t too difficult to explain:

  • Four different dynamical systems
    This multimedia post features four different dynamical systems to illustrate some properties of that relevant to my research: we’ll talk about the difference between “integrable” and “chaotic” dynamical systems, and the difference between “continuous-time” and “discrete-time” dynamical systems.
  • What is… a variational principle?
    Variational principles play fundamental role in much of mathematical physics and are a key topic in my own research. That’s a lot to cover, so let’s start with a little story…
  • What is… an integrable system?
    The oversimplified answer is that integrable systems are equations with a lot of structure. The kind of equations we are thinking about are differential equations, which describe change…

In print

Chalkdust is a “magazine for the mathematically curious”.

I wrote an article on Hamiltonian mechanics and Noether’s theorem for issue 15.

In the classroom

From 2016 until 2019 I led a math circle in Berlin. Math circles are extracurricular activities for secondary school students with an interest in mathematics. In Berlin they are coordinated by the MSG Leonhard Euler. The circles meet once a week during the school year to solve puzzles, tackle olympiad-style maths problems and learn about mathematical topics that aren’t usually discussed in school.

In your event

Feel free to contact me if you’d like me to give a lecture or workshop at your school or event.