Soap Bubbles and Math
Soap Bubbles and Mathematics
Dr. Dorff, President of the Mathematical Association of America and Professor of Mathematics at Brigham Young University, amazed and thrilled his captive audience of brilliant math students and faculty with his creative display of geometry, calculus, and soap bubbles!!
Abstract: In geometry, we learn that the shortest path between two points is a line. In this talk, we explore this idea in several different settings. First, we apply this idea to find the shortest path connecting four points. Then we move this idea up a dimension and look at a few equivalent ideas in terms of surfaces in 3-dimensional space. Surprisingly, these first two settings are connected through soap films that result when a wire frame is dipped into a soap solution. We use a hands-on approach to look at the geometry of some specific soap films and "minimal surfaces".
