Mathematical ideas that shaped the world

After the last lecture, the class holds a maths picnic where everyone is asked to bring a food that symbolises something we learnt about in the course. These are the imaginative offerings from the Autumn 2011 class! (Click on the pictures to get bigger versions.)

From Lecture 5, Four-colour waffles - no region shares a colour with an adjacent region.

From Lecture 3, Hilbert's cupcakes: take 2 out and put 1 back - how many will be left at the end of an infinitely long party?

From Lecture 7, one-sided Mobius scones.

Also from Lecture 7, hyperbolic cake, where the angles in triangles are less than 180 degrees...

...and spherical chocolate, where angles are more than 180 degrees.

From Lecture 8, sticks for playing Nim (or demonstrating straight lines in Lecture 7!).

From Lecture 6, a Koch snowflake cake.

From Lecture 4, a walnut displaying 2-fold symmetry (and also a somewhat hyperbolic structure!).

No maths picnic would be complete without Pi(e)! Also some raspberries with a Fibonnaci structure for good measure.

Finally, from Lecture 4, a maths joke: what's green and commutes? An abelian grape!