EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: You Can't Hear the Shape of a Drum
Speaker: Carolyn S. Gordon, Dartmouth
Speaker Info:
Brief Description:
Special Note: Undergraduate Prize Lecture and Award Ceremony
Abstract:

In spectroscopy, one attempts to determine the chemical composition of an object such as a star from the frequencies of emitted light. Analogously, Mark Kac's question "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" asks whether the characteristic frequencies of vibration of a membrane completely encode its shape. We will look both at positive answers (e.g., a round drum has no impostors) and negative answers. In particular, we will construct exotic shaped sound-alike drums.