5/23/2010 -- Group B: Complex numbers, groups and polyhedra - I (Yingkun Li)

Geometers have been interested in the symmetry and aesthetic beauty of regular polygons and regular polyhedra since antiquity. Ancient Greeks even associated their 5 classical elements to the 5 convex regular polyhedra in 3 dimensions. In these two talks, we will use complex numbers and its close cousin, the quaternions, to study the symmetries of these beautiful objects and see how their symmetries can have an impact in our life