BEAM 7 students and staff pose at the end of their hike atop the North South Lake campground.
Week 1 at the Bard Campus has come to a very exciting close, and Week 2 is promising to be even better than the last! There were amazing guest speakers, two thrilling field trips, and many other fun activities, both math related and not. Take a peek below for some highlights from moments in class throughout the week:
Week 1 topics courses concluded on Saturday, which means the second week of classes started this past Tuesday! This week, instructors have the following course offerings:
- Cryptography: Having Secrete Conversations in Public
- Group Theory
- The Royal Family, Evil Guy, and Evolution of Number Kingdoms
- The Chinese Remainder Theorem
- Math Team Strategies
- Solving Big Problems
Consistent with last week, students choose one of the first four options as their topics course, and they also choose one of the last two for their problem solving course. But what other opportunities do students have to explore fun mathematical concepts besides in class? In addition to a camp wide challenge problems--the second of which has yet to be solved--students partake in "Modules" Tuesday-Friday night. Modules gives the students a chance to see the mathematical concepts of the flavor they are likely to see in school, but they're slightly trickier and help develop quick and efficient mathematical problem solving skills.
In Other News...
We had many exciting things happen this week! With the conclusion of the first round of topics courses on Saturday, the students were rewarded with the first round of relays: a competition between groups of students where they must solve math puzzles while completing specific tasks to earns points--the teams with the most points get their peak of some neat prizes. In addition to that, students got the privilege to listen to 2 guest speakers on Saturday: Stephen Wolfram and Pedro Poitevin. Stephen Wolfram is a renowned mathematician and computer scientist who developed the popular program Mathematica and website WolframAlpha.com. Pedro Poitevin is a mathematics professor at Salem State University in Massachusetts, and he was also the undergraduate adviser to Javier, one of the instructors. Check out the pictures of Saturday's exciting events below!
As a weekend treat, we went on a group hike at the North South Lake campground, where most students and staff made the 2 hour trek to the top. After enjoying a stunning view of upstate New York, there was a picnic ready and waiting at our hike's starting point, where the kids got to spend some well-deserved free time hanging out and playing games before packing up to head back to Bard.
Students getting ready to start their hike!