The Mathematics Department of the University of Minnesota welcomes you to the Junior Colloquium! When school is in session, the Junior Colloquium is held every Monday at 12:20 P.M. in Vincent Hall 16. There will be cookies! Talks are intended to be accessible and interesting to a broad audience, from undergraduate math students to faculty.
The current organizers of the Junior Colloquium are Prof. Richard McGehee, Alexander Garver, and Becky Patrias. If you have questions about the seminar, or would like to recommend a speaker, please contact an organizer. Graduate students are especially encouraged to volunteer!
For questions about the web page please contact Becky Patrias.
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| January 23 | Trevor Bain |
Myhill and Nerode: relations given by distinguishing extensions and their fellow automatons |
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I'll cover the basics of Formal Languages. Then we'll examine a few languages to get a feel for the subject. Finally, I'll present the Myhill-Nerode theorem which gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a formal language being "regular".
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| January 30 | Erin Manlove |
Topology of Robot Arms |
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We examine planar robot arms, which consist of fixed lengths connected by revolving joints. We will use ideas from topology and geometry to describe the region that a robot arm can reach.
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| February 6 | John Goes |
A Gentle Introduction to the P-adics |
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We will define the p-adic numbers and discuss the topology induced by the p-adic metric. Using basic p-adic analysis, we will prove a couple of elementary results. Finally we will briefly discuss the role of the p-adics in number theory, particularly local-global results.
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| February 13 | John Lee |
Elastic and Viscoelastic Materials |
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Elastic and viscoelastic properties of materials are important to understand kinematics of materials in continuum mechanics. I will introduce basic concepts of continuum mechanics in a rather intuitive approach and discuss some properties of linear elastic and viscoelastic materials.
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| February 20 | Jonathan Hill |
TBA |
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| February 27 | Professor Jonathan Rogness |
TBA |
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| March 5 | Julie Leifeld |
TBA |
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| March 19 |
A not non-interesting talk on intuitionistic logic |
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| March 26 |
TBA |
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| April 2 |
TBA |
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| April 9 |
TBA |
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| April 16 |
No Junior Colloquium today due to written prelims |
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| April 23 |
TBA |
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| April 30 |
TBA |
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The Junior Colloquium evolved from the ATaC seminar -- an acronym for "All Topics Are Considered," previously "Algebra, Topology and Combinatorics." [The name is due to Dr. Peter Webb.]