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Thursday, February 24 JUNIOR COLLOQUIUM TIME: 3:35 – 4:25 p.m. ROOM: Ayres 405 (Colloquium Room) SPEAKER: Professor Andrew Miller of Beaumont University TITLE: The Trouble with Tribbles (for Hairdressers) ABSTRACT: In a classic episode of the original Star Trek TV series, the Enterprise is overrun by adorable, spherical, fur-covered creatures called tribbles. Suppose you are a Federation stylist and are tasked with taming a tribble's tresses. Could you comb all of its fur flat? A cylindrical or donut-shaped tribble would provide no trouble (can you imagine how it could be done?), but spherical tribbles present more of a challenge. We will tackle the mathematical version of this question, encountering such ideas as vector fields, singularities, and the Euler characteristic. The answer to the tribble challenge provides an example of the many fascinating interactions between global and local behavior on surfaces. Please stop by prior to the talk for pizza in Ayres 401. Conrad Plaut Professor, Director of UT Math Honors Math Department Ayres Hall 224C University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-0612 Phone: 865-974-4319 http://web.utk.edu/~cplaut