Mathematics of everyday images and infinite computers in ICMAT’s Science and Technology Week

5 November, 2024

On 5 and 6 November ICMAT is organising two activities for secondary school students on the occasion of Science and Technology Week. One of these will be a lecture entitled ‘Numbers that shine: mathematics in everyday images’, given by Fernando Chamizo (ICMAT-UAM); the second will be the workshop ‘The limits of computation’, to be led by Laura Castilla Castellano (ICMAT-UCM). Places for both days are sold out.

ICMAT is once again celebrating Science and Technology Week with two activities for secondary and Baccalaureate students, which will take place at the Institute itself. In total, more than 300 students are taking part.

Image: Fernando Chamizo

On 4 November, Fernando Chamizo, ICMAT member and senior lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, will give a lecture entitled ‘Numbers that shine: mathematics in everyday images’. In it, he will explain the mathematics that can be observed in everyday phenomena, such as, among other examples, the glitter that forms at the bottom of a cup, linked to the multiplication tables of twos and threes. It will also show how mathematics is behind the editing of digital images; for example, the filters applied to them correspond to very simple manipulations with lists of integers.

Meanwhile, in the workshop ‘The limits of computation’, which will take place on 6 November, Laura Castilla Castellano, pre-doctoral researcher at ICMAT and the Complutense University of Madrid, will focus on computers and their capacity to help solve mathematical problems, some of which are impossible to tackle with human calculations alone. Despite their sophistication, these machines still have certain limitations, such as a finite memory. From there, Castilla will ask: what if we had an infinite computer, could all problems be solved?