Exhibition
What would our world look like if it had only two dimensions? Would it be a vast plane or could it possibly have another shape, such as a giant Möbius strip?
From 14 to 25 March 2022 the exhibition "The Shape of Space" invited visitors to think about and play with two- and three-dimensional spaces and to familiarize themselves with topology, the mathematical study of shapes.
Highlights
- Largest Möbius strip ever built at ETH
- The artful creations of the Flatlander mathematics competition were on display
- Maths games and virtual-reality curved-space billiards
- Video portraits of former students
Exhibition contents
Objects of the Flatlander competition
Imagine two-dimensional beings called flatlanders. What does their universe look like? Do flatlanders live on a plane? Or are there other surfaces on which these two-dimensional beings could move around? School classes participating in our competition have had to come up with an answer to those questions and create an object that represents their idea of a flatlander universe.
More information on the competition (German)
Torus Games
How can we understand the idea of a multiconnected universe? Thanks to the square game board, where the left edge is virtually connected to the right edge and the top edge to the bottom edge, we can play games on what is called a flat torus. Jeffrey R. Weeks has developed these computer games to help people develop an understanding of a model universe that is finite but has no boundaries.
external pageGames by Jeffrey R. Weeks
Career oportunities of graduates
What motivates young people to study mathematics and what do they do after they graduate? In a collection of video portraits, students explain why they chose their degree course, researchers describe their fascination with mathematics and professionals talk about how they apply their mathematical skills in their everyday working lives. The portraits provide a glimpse into the universe of opportunities offered by a degree in mathematics.
Portraits of students (German)
Portraits of femal mathematicians
In this section of the exhibition we also show the video portrait of Alice Roth. This traces the life of Alice Roth – an extraordinary mathematician who was far ahead of her time and did pioneering work in many ways. The Alice Roth Lectures were established in her honour and are now being held for the first time, as part of the goMATH supporting programme.
