Ben at Birkbeck
Amin sent these pictures - he said he misses his
friend...
(See also Ben at Birkbeck - take 2.)
[click to see
where the swirly pictures came from]
ĦQue haya luz! Kerenza ha yeghes da! Dad/Andrew x
[Ed: from Jared:] Great pictures, really sends me back to those
times spent revising calculus with Ben, amazing times that I'll never
forget. Jared
[Ed: from Luke:] Ben was especially proud of that drawing, the one
with the swirls, what special Maths thing does it depict? He sent it to me
a few times and it is on PARS. Luke.
[Ed: reply from Jared:] I'm pretty
sure the swirly one was from Calculus 3. We were studying dynamical
systems at the time and the swirly diagram is called a phase portrait.
Things like these:
and these crazy things called "strange attractors" that we studied:
They depict how systems evolve over time, we studied things like
populations of predators and prey, how war battles play out etc. That
particular one in the photo I believe was for a question sheet, but I
can't remember the details of what is what meant to be modelling. I do
remember Ben having a great time combining his maths side with his artsy
side and sketching out these diagrams as if he was a computer though! ??
I miss those times and miss Ben greatly.
Jared
[Ed: a
bit more from me:] At the time of Ben's funeral, Jared
very kindly brought another interesting swirly picture - one which Ben had
been fascinated by...except it was a 3D shape (i.e. not really a picture)
representing a 'Klein flask' which cannot be represented in three
dimensions, only in four...
...it is something like a Mobius band: the wonderful strip of paper that
has only one side...except the Klein flask is in 3 (no, sorry, 4)
dimensions:
A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Mobius band was divine.
Said he: "If you glue
The edges of two,
You'll get a weird bottle like mine."
Jared's Klein flask is sitting, with one or two other special objects that
remind us of Ben (a small origami crane made out of a covid test
certificate, and a couple of Marlboro fag ends) in the Corser family
shrine.
Thank you, Jared.
[Ed: a note from Luke:] There are
mathematical models you can create with crochet - hyperbolic planes. Sad I
never got to show Ben these.
[Ed: here is a picture and some links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocheting_Adventures_with_Hyperbolic_Planes
https://crochetbug.com/tag/hyperbolic-plane/, which
includes a TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1TBZhd-sN0
]