VCU news

By Dina Weinstein

Paper models, diagrams, charts – and the occasional shout of “Shazam!” – filled the room on a recent Sunday in the Math Exchange, a space that was living up to its name in VCU’s new STEM building.

In a hands-on way, a handful of Richmond-area teens were receiving some weekend wisdom from a Virginia Commonwealth University professor. It was a session of VCU’s Math Circle, a monthly workshop that brings middle and high school students to campus to meet with math faculty and explore topics – from the joy of juggling to the seriousness of modeling disease spread – to broaden appreciation for how math can reveal answers and solve problems.

Part of a national program, VCU’s Math Circle dates to 2018, and sessions are free to local students, who can attend any that pique their interest. In-person Math Circles endured interruption during early phases of the pandemic, but on this recent afternoon, Craig Larson, Ph.D., was holding court – and things were literally taking shape.

A professor in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Larson led his students in exploring what are known as the Platonic solids – the five geometric shapes whose faces are identical polygons meeting at the same three-dimensional angles. You might readily recognize the pyramid (a four-triangled tetrahedron) as well as the cube (with six square faces), and there also is the octahedron (eight triangular faces), dodecahedron (12 pentagonal faces) and icosahedron (20 triangular faces).

The group began by building paper models to give students a strong sense of each shape. Then Larson led a discussion, involving charts and sketches and whiteboards, which helped students collect data about the solids. Throughout the 90-minute session, they answered Larson’s questions and helped him analyze algebraic formulas.

“Shazam!” Larson declared when the formulas worked out. And he noted how the ancient mathematicians clearly were on to something. “The five figures that the Greeks identified as the only possible Platonic solids couldn’t be some crazy thing.”

Larson developed his Math Circle session to give students a sharp focus on algebra, with the uniqueness of the Platonic solids having a connection to his research area (graph theory) – “and it’s connected to carbon chemistry and recently discovered molecules,” he said. “So it has neat science connections, too.”

Assistant math professor V. Rani Satyam, one of the VCU Math Circle co-organizers, joined the Sunday workshop.

“The professors do a really good job of taking an idea and really figuring out how to do something that’s at the level of a middle or high school student, because most of our work, you can boil it down to something that a middle or high schooler can understand,” Satyam said. “It’s also a space for us to talk about math, what students want to do when they grow up and what it’s like to be a college student.”

Satyam’s co-organizers are associate professor Moa Apagodu, Ph.D., and teaching assistant professors Hilary Cassil, Ph.D., and Jody Cox, Ph.D., all of whom volunteer their time for the Math Circle program.

“We reach out to faculty to present on topics they find interesting, so there is no set content nor set presenters,” said Cassil, who added that the organizers aim to promote topics ahead of each session to generate interest – and that some high school math teachers offer students extra credit for attending.

“It was fun,” said Vansh Goel, a ninth-grader at J.R. Tucker High School after the Math Circle session with Larson. “You can ask more questions and participate more than in school. We learned a lot about the shapes and the formulas and everything, and I thought it was pretty interesting.” 

Goel said his mother heard about the session and encouraged him to attend – and as he readies for pre-calculus next year, he plans to return to the Math Circle.

To keep abreast of sessions in the spring semester, email mathcircle@vcu.edu.