Calvin's Research Project
“I had a cool idea of introducing the Year 12 students to some modern mathematics in an accessible way. Usually what you see in high school mathematics can be 300 years old, and my project will use relatively modern concepts that were established in the past century.
We’ll be using things called ‘indices’ to compute topological properties of different spaces. In mathematics, we sometimes group surfaces by how many holes they have.
The classic example is a doughnut and a coffee mug. They may look different, but it’s possible to transform one into the other by twisting and stretching the shapes because they have the same number of holes. (In a coffee mug, it’s the hole in the handle; and in the doughnut, it’s the doughnut hole in the middle.)
Mathematicians have found ways to calculate certain topological properties in two-dimensional surfaces using indices. There’ll be a bit of coding and a lot of thinking. I hope the students see the fun in part of mathematics that connect to science.”
Calvin's journey into Mathematics
“I wasn’t particularly interested in mathematics for a long time because I just was not very good at school. It was only when I began to improve that I got into a positive feedback loop where the better I was, the more I wanted to learn.
I was always a bit interested in theoretical physics in high school, just from reading popular science books. My favourite as a high schooler was probably ‘The Elegant Universe’ by Brian Greene.
I found thinking about deep concepts about the Universe really cool, but now as a PhD student, I find that just doing calculations and problem solving, then seeing it all click together at the end is what’s the most fun.”