2001 B.C. Colleges High School Mathematics Contest May 4, 2001

On Friday, May 4, 2001, Langara College hosted the Lower Mainland section of the B.C. Colleges High School Mathematics Contest.

About 60 students from seven Lower Mainland schools participated in the events, which included writing the Contest, building a cardboard Sierpinski pyramid, presentations about mathematics in architecture and fractal dimension, and prizes for the winners of the Contest.

Schedule of events
Time	Activity	Place
8:30--9:00	Gather in A 136a and begin to work on the Stanley Park measurement problem.	A 136a
9:00--9:15	Welcome and introduction School Teacher Junior Senior Sir Winston Churchill Mr. Nakamoto 3 1 Eric Hamber Secondary Mr. Ellis 5 3 Ideal Mini School Mr. Knaiger 5 2 John Oliver Ms. Borgren 5 0 R.C. Palmer Secondary Mr. Wong 6 7 David Thompson Secondary Mr. Chien 4 8 Windermere Secondary Ms. Custodia 6 6 34 27 Total 61	A 136a
9:15--11:15	Write the Contest	A 136a and A 109
11:15--12:00	Build a Sierpinski Pyramid	A 136a
12:00--1:00	Pizza	Cafeteria
1:00--2:30	Presentations Mathematics and Shape Diana Sly (B.Arch) -- Display + Design Department In this short talk, Diana explored the idea that historically, when it came to big breakthroughs in building shapes and structures math has always led the way, and architecture followed. To illustrate this point, she began her presentation by drawing on the 3 simplest platonic shapes (the triangle, the circle, and the square) to discuss a few "iconic" structures patterned after those shapes. Her talk ended with a brief glimpse of the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle, a recently-constructed building which was inspired in its shapes and forms by elements of chaos theory. Fractal Dimension Dave Lidstone -- Department of Mathematics and Statistics In this talk, Dave introduced Fractal Dimension (in particular, Richardson Dimension) as a measure of the complexity of a geometric object. Richardson Dimension offers a numerical sense of how much a curve bends or a surface folds, or of how many gaps there might be in a curve, plane region or solid region. The technicalities of the definition involve exponents that are different from the expected dimension of 1, 2 or 3, and logarithms to see such an exponent as the slope of a line. To illustrate the definition and how it is computed, students used a map of Stanley Park to estimate the lengths of the English Bay side (labelled P to E on this map), and the Burrard Inlet side (labelled P to B on this map). The data they collected suggest that the Richardson Dimension of the English Bay side is abut 1.007 and the dimension of the Burrard Inlet side is about 1.041. These figures give us a numerical measure that the Burrard Inlet side bends more than the English Bay side of Stanley Park.	A 136a
2:30--3:00	Contest results and presentation of prizes   Junior Senior Prizes Third Jue Hung David Thompson Shaohau Yuan R.C. Palmer Langara T-shirt Tuition waiver ($100, $200) Second Jeff Zhao Eric Hamber Tony Li David Thompson Langara knapsack Tuition waiver ($150, $300) First Zixiang Zhou David Thompson Cornwall Lau David Thompson The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger Tuition waiver ($250, $500)	A 136a