Program of the 3rd edition of FestMat combines technology and innovation

22/08/2024

To bring mathematics closer to society, the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA) is promoting the 3rd edition of the National Mathematics Festival (FestMat) on September 5, 6 and 7 in Rio de Janeiro. With the theme “Mathematics is innovation”, the free event offers experiences that unite creativity and technology.

Activities for children and adults will take over the Marina da Glória, on the Aterro do Flamengo. The first day of the event is exclusive to previously registered public and private schools. The Festival is open to the public on Friday afternoon (6) and Saturday afternoon (7). To guarantee free entry, simply register on the Festival’s website.

“The National Mathematics Festival is an important instrument for IMPA to engage directly with society as a whole, spreading the word about mathematics that creates, innovates and delights. It’s fun with mathematics for the whole family,” said Marcelo Viana, the institute’s director-general.

More than 32,000 people attended the first two editions of FestMat, in 2017 and 2022. Now in its third edition, the event is firmly established in Rio de Janeiro’s calendar and will be held every two years.

This year’s program will include presentations of projects developed at IMPA, such as the Space-XR Expanded Reality Space, run by Visgraf (IMPA’s Computer Graphics Laboratory), in partnership with Lapid (National Museum), BioDesign (PUC-Rio) and INT. The activity provides a virtual tour of Neferhotep’s tomb in Ancient Egypt. Visitors will be able to see the details of the walls of the tomb and also see the statues of the Egyptian pharaoh and his family, who lived approximately 3,300 years ago.

IMPA researcher Tiago Novello will give a lecture on September 7 on the use of exact sciences in entertainment. “We’re going to learn a bit about the mathematics behind computer graphics, behind the modeling and rendering of three-dimensional objects, which are very useful in the development of games and in cinema,” he said.

During the three-day event, visitors will also be able to take part in a 3D atelier, where they can bring their drawings to life; a virtual escape room, which proposes solving logical reasoning problems in challenging environments; and a musical experience that invites the public to manipulate fractions, BPM and frequencies to create new melodies.

The play “Numbers and Life” is yet another new experience. Performed by Coletivo Comum, the show proposes associations between common adolescent behaviors, such as existential concerns, the use of digital technologies and social rebellion, with mathematical questions and games.

The event has many partners, including the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Firjan) SESI, which will offer activities with the Firjan SESI Matemática mobile unit, and the Military Engineering Institute (IME), which will bring a robot soccer game to the venue.

The OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad for Public Schools), held by IMPA throughout the country for more than 18 million students, will also have a place at the Festival. Visitors will be challenged to solve logical reasoning questions from the Olympiad.

IMPA Tech students, IMPA’s undergraduate program inaugurated in April this year, will present the “Xenolinguistics Project” at a round table. The work, developed in the subject “Language Skills” during the first semester, is the result of creating hypothetical languages to learn the basics of grammar.

Another of the institute’s activities at the event will be the IMPA Olympic Girls (MOI) stand, which will present Arduino robotics prototypes, puzzles that stimulate creativity and mathematical reasoning, mosaics made from magic cubes and experiments with three-dimensional drawings. The full program is full of news and available on the Festival’s website.

Read more: ‘The math Olympics led me to IMPA’, says Artur Avila
See also: Marcelo Viana debates innovation and technology at Rio Innovation Week