Skip to main content

Welcome!

Welcome to MA 391: Composition and Communication at the University of Kentucky!

This semester we are going to be practicing the (sometimes frustrating and always ) important skill of communicating mathematics. At the start of the semester we are going to revisit some topics from calculus and for each of those topics you will pick an example you think really helps explain what is going on. You will design and print a 3d model of that example. Then you will write a blog post (here!) and a description card for your model and participate in the class show and tell.

After spending some time in calculus we will switch over to topics motivated by geometry and topology. You don't need to know anything about these area yet. We're going to look at them since they will be new to many of you, they lend themselves well to visualization projects and my research is in topology!

Popular posts from this blog

Do Over: Integration Over a Region in a Plane

Throughout the semester we have covered a variety of topics and how their mathematical orientation applies to real world scenarios. One topic we discussed, and I would like to revisit, is integration over a region in a plane which involves calculating a double integral. Integrating functions of two variables allows us to calculate the volume under the function in a 3D space. You can see a more in depth description and my previous example in my blog post, https://ukyma391.blogspot.com/2021/09/integration-for-over-regions-in-plane_27.html . I want to revisit this topic because in my previous attempt my volume calculations were incorrect, and my print lacked structural stability. I believed this print and calculation was the topic I could most improve on and wanted to give it another chance. What needed Improvement? The function used previously was f(x) = cos(xy) bounded on [-3,3] x [-1,3]. After solving for the estimated and actual volume, it was difficult to represent in a print...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ruled Surfaces : Trefoil

Ruled Surfaces : Trefoil A ruled surface is a surface that consists straight lines, called rulings, which lie upon the surface. These surfaces are formed of a set of points that are "swept" by a straight line. This is relatively intuitive once you see a good visual, but can be a bit abstract without that concrete example. A very basic example of a ruled surface is a cylinder; if we have a straight line and move it in a circle we create a cylinder made entirely of straight line. Note that the surface will only be a cylinder if all the lines are parallel. If the lines are not parallel we can create hyperboloids and cones depending on how much we have rotated. The rotation we are describing here is not a simple turning action, but more of a twisting motion—less like rotating a can by turning it and more like wringing out a washcloth by twisting it. Specifically, a cylinder is essentially two circles connected by rulings, if we keep one of the circles...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do Over: Ruled Surfaces

Why to choose this project to repeat For the do over project, I would like to choose the ruled surfaces. I don't think my last project was creative, and the 3D printed effect was not very satisfactory. In the previous attempts, all the lines are connected between a straight line and a circle. This connection structure is relatively uncomplicated. The printed model has too many lines, resulting in too dense line arrangement. The gaps between lines are too small, and the final effect is that all the lines are connected into a curved surface, which is far from the effect I expected. What to be improved In this do over project, I would like to improve in two aspects. Firstly, a different ruled surface is chosen. In the previous model, one curve is a unit circle on the \(x-y\) plane, and the ruled surface is a right circular conoid. In this do over project, it is replaced by two border lines. Each borderline is in the shape of an isosceles right triangl...
Post a Comment
Read more