Wait, so crochet plus corals equals… math? Yup! That’s right, corals are actually one of nature’s examples of a hyperbolic surface and crochet is a perfect way to model it. Not sure what any of that means? Not to worry, I wasn’t either until I listened to Prof. Kari Calta’s talk on hyperbolic geometry in the second week of our Community Coral Project presentations!
Professor Calta teaches in the math department at Vassar as well as being the director of the Exploring Transfer program (an initiative which connects with students from community colleges who are interested in moving to four-year liberal arts institutions). She fell in love with hyperbolic geometry because it challenges many of the geometric ideas that we take for granted.
Hyperbolic geometry is elegant, surprising, counterintuitive, and it makes some pretty sweet art, as we’ve seen with our crochet coral creation! Please enjoy this video that brings together math and art in a tangible and understandable way, and come by again tomorrow for more content 🙂
-Maya
*Note: Again, the beginning of this video is slides but we get going at 1:05 😉
Featured image: https://www.h-its.org/projects/comparing-hyperbolic-and-euclidean-geometry/