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6/19/2008 'Knot' for nothing do young women flock to Rice As an elementary school student in California, Shelly Harvey would sit and solve math problems for fun. Now she hopes to capture the imaginations of high schoolers enticed by thoughts of a career in mathematics through the Rice University Mathematical Institute for Young Women, a National Science Foundation-sponsored program that started this week.
Harvey said her students, who are from 11 greater-Houston high schools, were recommended for the program by their teachers. “They have a real love for mathematics,” she said. “This program is not designed for random students. They have to have open minds.” She'll open those young minds to the wonders of knot theory and topology — specialties of hers that seek to explain the spatial properties of objects in multidimensional space — and other abstract branches of mathematics that provide solutions for such real-world problems as the properties of DNA in cancer research. Speakers from Baylor College of Medicine, NASA and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young will help show that uses for abstract math reach far beyond academia. “We're trying to introduce them to concepts their high school teachers would not be knowledgeable about,” said Harvey, who earned her doctorate at Rice in 2002, “and to offer them a glimpse of what it would be like to be math majors in college. “It's not really a course, so much as an enrichment program.” She promises it will be fun as well as profitable. (Students who complete the program earn a $500 stipend.) To study knots, which she described as strings with closed ends in three-dimensional space, a bit of social engineering will be employed. “You can make knots out of humans by holding arms,” she said, noting that unlike shoelaces, mathematical knots can never be untied. “You stand in a circle and all reach out and randomly grab some arms, which is similar to what might occur in natural processes.” Students would then try to figure out which knot they're part of. It's not as easy as it sounds. “We'll also investigate the relationship between a circular knot and the three-dimensional space around it,” she said. “One way is to take a piece of wire that's knotted up and closed, so you get a circular knot made out of wire, and then dip it into soap solution. What emerges is a two-dimensional surface that consists of soap film, the boundary of which is the knot.” Using surfaces to study knots is a technique used extensively in low-dimensional topology, she said. Her outstanding work in topology has earned her one of eight National Science Foundation CAREER grants awarded this year in core mathematics to support the early career development of junior faculty members. She credited the Rice University Mathematical Leadership Institute for helping with the new program and with her own career. Assisting her this week and next are a postdoctoral associate and two graduate students, with guidance from the institute's Anne Papakonstantinou and Jacqueline Sack. A native Californian, Harvey said math “was always something I did for fun on my own, even when I was very young. I remember in elementary school I liked math more then anything else. So I guess I was a born mathematician. Also, my dad was a math major in college and now he teaches math in high school.” Will her own young students catch on? “I hope so ... I'm about to find out!” |
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