Day 17: Lecture in Heidelberg

Hallo from Heidelberg!

Today we woke up to enjoy a delicious hotel breakfast to fuel our brains for some math. I was quite fond of the pancakes and nutella, and enjoyed a generous helping of cantaloupe. We were told that this hotel has the best breakfast out of any of them on the trip, so we are working hard to enjoy it before we leave.

View from our hotel window

After breakfast, we staked out a spot in the hotel lounge to hold class. We talked about power series and Taylor series, brushing off our Calc II skills (or for some of us, using Mathematica to avoid needing to brush off our Calc II skills). 

For lunch, we headed off in different directions. Some went back to the hotel right after finding food, others hit up the local shops. The only stipulation was that we needed to be back in the hotel lobby by 15:20 to go to our next activity.

Lunch from a local bagel shop (thank you to Kate for taking the photo)

Then it was time to head to the Mathematikon at Heidelberg University for a guest lecture. Despite a substantial amount of technical difficulties, we learned a lot about Emmy Noether from Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a math professor here in Heidelberg. We are very grateful to the professor for preparing and giving his lecture!

Under the Mathematikon sign

Shortly after, a large majority of the group went on a bowling adventure, eager to take advantage of a limited time special offer. Based on the group chat, it seems they had lots of fun. I, however, had a pleasant and quiet night in and got a head start on the readings for tomorrow.

Kaisa and I got ramen for dinner... yum!

All in all, a productive day! Hopefully we will get some good sleep tonight and be ready for our third DEI discussion tomorrow.

-Rosemary