Opening Gambit
CMU Students Build Knight-Inspired Math Sculpture
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
- Phone 412-268-9982
On a sunny Friday, a group of Carnegie Mellon University students made a move to assemble an 8-foot structure that sets on the patio of Wean Hall and represents the 288 moves a knight can make on a 3D chess board.
"We aren’t horsing around, this is serious math,” said Lou Feng, a BXA junior studying drama and mathematical sciences and a member of the Math Club. "Even though this is high-level mathematics, we want it to be something everyone can enjoy."
"Knight’s Move" — built from strips of red, black and gold metal — is a collaboration between the Carnegie Mellon Math Club and Glen Whitney, a member of math art collective Studio Infinity. Though the structure is complex, it achieves stability without relying on triangles, a standard defensive formation in engineering designs, much like the fortress of Pittsburgh’s iconic bridges.
"The magic of mathematics is that the sculpture is structurally stable to hold itself up, even though there are no triangles," Whitney said. "The three colors help you see there’s no triangle because we’ve divided the connection points into four group: A, B, C and D. Red goes from A to B, gold goes from B to C and black goes from C to D. If you’ve got those groups and you try to take a trip of three steps, you can never end up back where you started."
The project was no blitz. It took careful planning and coordination. David Offner, associate teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies for mathematical sciences, first connected with Whitney creating a math-inspired installation at Carnegie Mellon. Offner then brought in three students to bring the idea to life: Feng; Tate Rowney, a sophomore studying mathematical sciences; and Allison Ma, a junior studying mathematical sciences and the community development chair for the Math Club.
The students worked with Whitney to select the subject of the sculpture, which was based on an analysis of a unit distance problem created by Paul Erdös, a prolific mathematician who worked in graph theory. In the sculpture, each move is shown through metal lines connected by points known as vertices, forming a kind of mathematical endgame in three dimensions.
"Graphs are objects in discrete mathematics that are often hard to visualize, but this one is unique because we can place it in three dimensions, so we can actually see it," Tate said. The final checkmate came on Aug. 29, when students from across campus gathered to build the sculpture.
"We were really excited to see people come out," Ma said. "Chess is a really big deal for some of the math community, and even people who aren’t interested in chess still thought it was aesthetically interesting.”
The sculpture will remain until the end of the fall semester. Carnegie Mellon community members and the wider Pittsburgh area are encouraged to make their move and check it out.
"It’s cool to have something that’s both mathematically interesting and that will look nice as it’s standing," Offner said. "I hope this is a representation of what students can do when they come together — a real power play for math and art."
