Termcard for Trinity Term 1998

Tuesday 1^st Week
Puzzles and Games
The Invariants have roughly four kilos of puzzles and games, including Campaign, Rat-race, Monopoly, Careers, Law and Order, Speculate, 3D Noughts and Crosses, and Virtual Risk – like
Risk, but without the game board. Come along and try your hand at them.

Tuesday 2^nd Week
Dr Frances Kirwan (Balliol)
“Square Roots and 17-gons”
The construction of regular polygons using only a straightedgfe and a pair of compasses is a very old problem in mathematics which goes back to the ancient Greeks and before. It was not solved until the nineteenth century and event today the solution is not quite complete.

Tuesday 3^rd Week
Kirstie Jackson (St Hilda’s)
“More memories than had I lived 1000 Years”
The Invariants have been around for a very, very long time – long enough for the Archive to have aquired some very interesting artefacts. Kirstie Jackson is curently cataloguing the records, and will report on her discoveries, with some explanation of the
“science” of archivism: there is a chance to see some more amusing items.

Saturday 3^rd Week
Visit to Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park was the birthplace of computing, as well as one of the major reasons that this term-card is not written in German in heavy gothic type. Impressive exhibitions of electronic arcana, and a fully-operational tank. Meet Gloucester Green bus stop, 10:00am. £3.50 entry charge at the door; some food available at
Bletchley, or bring a packed lunch.

Tuesday 4^th Week
Dr Martin Bridson (Pembroke)
“The grammar of navigating in space”
An intriguing title, subtitled ‘Linguistics and large-scale geometry’. I’m
looking forward to discovering what this talk’s all about

Tuesday 5^th Week
Quiz Night
An old Invariant tradition, the Quiz Night is a stunningly difficult test of your general knowledge skills. Questions will avoid relevant mathematics entirely, to avoid giving an unfair advantage to people revising. If you found yourself bemoaning the ignorance and sloth of the Magdalen University Challenge team, this is the place for you.

Tuesday 6^th Week
Ice Skating
Exams are beginning to loom large on the horizon, so why not obtain a medical discharge by breaking a selection of limbs on the ice. Meet outside the Institute 8:15pm, or Carfax Square 8:30pm (since the ice rink is the other side of Oxford from the Institute). This will cost about £4.

Tuesday 7^th Week
Informal Gathering
Gather, informally, in room deB102 in Keble (Miles Blackford’s room), for some heavy mathematical erudition and the watching of Improving Videos. Red Dwarf, Blackadder and Babylon 5 seem about the right level.

Tuesday 8^th Week
Informal Gathering
Return to room deB102 in Keble, secure in the knowledge that there are
only a few more Finals papers left to do. Watch videos, drink tea, eat
Jaffa cakes, and have fun.