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In the last decade we saw an unimaginable spread of the internet technology which came with the challenge of handling the ever growing amount of information. This raised the need for professionals well trained in multidisciplinary areas. In our me it is more important than ever to bring mathematics closer to the public. We are convinced that mathematics can and has to be popularized in a very wide range, on several different levels.
Most of us have visited science museums throughout the nation and know how successful they are. The mission of a typical science museum is to teach the public for the basics of several fields including physics, chemistry, biology and space science. Mathematics in general is viewed as a field of abstract mind, which is too deep for the public to enjoy and therefore it has been excluded from the topics of such museums.
To change this situation the Department of Industrial and Graphic Design in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Auburn University ran an industrial design studio class to make selected mathematical models and exhibits providing informal learning experience. This web site shows the result of a semester-long work of fifteen students led by Design Professor Bret H. Smith and Andras Bezdek. Our hope was to show that through informal “hands-on” experiments the students can learn mathematical facts easier and in a deeper level.