At this month’s math circle in the Kingston Library, we focused on the SET game above all our other wonderful puzzles and games. For those new to the game, there was the beginner’s table, and for those adept at finding those 3 card triples, we had the advanced table. Can you find any sets in these photos?
Most students made a cardiod curve. It’s amazing how many straight line segments can give the illusion of a curved line. There is some deeper mathematics underneath what looks like string art: given a family of straight lines like we drew in this activity, the envelope of the family of lines is a curve that is tangent to each of the lines. In this case, the envelope of the lines is a cardiod curve.
To investigate further, what is the envelope of another family of lines? On the orange sheet, we see another envelope of a family of line segments.
You can download this month’s problem set on our documents page.
See you at the next Bard Math Circle!