Applied mathematics through toys and magic

This course is a series of case-studies in doing applied mathematics on surprising phenomena we notice in daily life. Almost every class will show demos of these phenomena (toys and magic) and suggest open projects. The topics range over a great variety and cut across areas traditionally pigeonholed as physics, biology, engineering, computer science, mathematics ¿ but, instead of developing sophisticated mathematics on simple material, our aim is to extract simple mathematical understanding from sophisticated material which, at first, we may not yet know how to pigeonhole. In each class I will try to make the discussion self-contained and to give everybody something to take home, regardless of the background.