Wednesday, May 2 at 6pm, the Math Society will be having a talk in Kemeny 006.

Title: Vibrating drums, Cayley graphs and isospectral surfaces

Speaker: Craig J. Sutton

 

Abstract: In 1966, Kac asked whether it is possible for a person with perfect pitch to hear the shape of a drum.

That is, he wondered whether two drums which sound exactly the same must be geometrically identical. This question has a natural generalization to surfaces and higher dimensional manifolds. After defining precisely what it means for us to "hear" a drum, surface or manifold, we will then show how Cayley graphs can be used to construct surfaces that sound the same, but are geometrically distinct. If time allows we will also discuss some original work related to this problem done by Seunghee Ye ('10) in his Honors Thesis.

**Pizza and soft drinks will be served