IMPA Tech brings innovation to the National Math Festival in Rio

05/09/2024

IMPA Tech, the undergraduate program of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, is taking part in the National Mathematics Festival, an event promoted by IMPA to present the discipline in an innovative, playful and fun way. Held at Marina da Glória, in Rio de Janeiro, the Festival is open to all audiences and runs until next Saturday (7).

Students from the Mathematics of Technology and Innovation undergraduate program presented the Xenolinguistics Project, a piece of work developed in the first semester in the Language Skills subject, which dialogues with different areas of knowledge. “The main point is that everything is linked to mathematics and technology. And we can learn while having fun,” said student Felipe Giehl, on the #FestMat stage on Thursday morning (5).

Under the guidance of Professor Cilene Rodrigues, the students developed different languages focused on specific needs, with morphemes and grammatical rules. The idea was to create hypothetical languages, “alien languages”, which have syntax similar to human languages, in order to learn the basics of grammar in a dynamic way.

Applying interdisciplinary skills, one of the projects used Minecraft, an electronic game that allows users to explore a three-dimensional world in blocks, pixelated and procedurally generated. “Our project is not related to another planet, but to a digital game. We created a language for the Minecraft universe, inserting the language into the software to improve the way games are taught,” said Giehl.

And mathematics is the basis of everything. Numbers were key to innovating and creating a functional communication system. “We defined sounds for the digits from 0 to 7, because the Minecraft system works on the basis of eight. With our language, the villagers in the game could use this system to pass on the coordinates of any point on their map,” he said.

Asla Sá, academic manager of IMPA Tech, also took part in the Festival program and showed how it is possible to visualize things that are beyond the human visible spectrum, in the lecture “Seeking to see the invisible”. Through mathematics, she showed visitors ‘mathematical tricks’ to turn the invisible into the visible.

“The visible is a very small part of the electromagnetic signals that are in our daily lives. A lot is invisible, like microwaves and radio waves. Physics and chemistry have very cool solutions, but mathematics also has its tricks and can help us,” he said.

X-rays and microscopes are widely used for medical purposes, but there are other ways of applying mathematics in everyday life. Asla pointed out that digital images and graphic representation can be a trick, as they make it easier to visualize data from large databases and generate new interpretations. “In a way, any matrix of numbers can be an image, and this can be a trick to see the invisible,” he said.

Asla also showed that the discipline works like hardware, enabling new powers and possibilities of perception. “Mathematics can be a kind of armor like that of Iron Man. Once you equip yourself with mathematics, you can have certain powers. And we’re in a reality where some of these technologies are already accessible. Here at the Festival, these powers are transformed into sensations that you can experience.”

Infrared, which some birds and animals already have naturally in their vision apparatus, can be used to generate new images visible to the naked eye, for example. “It is in this sense that mathematics can function as a superpower, bringing invisible information and data into the visible. Through applications of the discipline, we can transform massive data into tangible information. “, concluded Asla.

Read more: Festival wants to enchant audiences with mathematics, says Marcelo Viana
See also: IMPA Tech promotes chat on anxiety and mental health