Seminar
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Analysis and Probability Seminar

Johan Wästlund, Chalmers/University of Gothenburg: Billiards, Checkers, and Quadratic Reciprocity

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Overview

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  • Date:Starts 13 February 2024, 13:15Ends 13 February 2024, 14:15
  • Location:
    MV:L14, Chalmers tvärgata 3
  • Language:English

I will discuss fairly simple proofs of the famous Law of Quadratic Reciprocity through two activities: In Arithmetic Billiards, a ball is bouncing around in a rectangle. In Parity Checkers we place checkers on a checkerboard under certain parity constraints. Both activities turn out to capture the division of congruence classes modulo a prime into squares and non-squares.

Jakob Björnberg
  • Head of Unit, Analysis and Probability Theory, Mathematical Sciences
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