Winners MATH+ Advent Calendar 2024

Every year 4TU.AMI joins forces with the Berlin Mathematics Research Center MATH+ in Germany to organize the MATH+ Advent Calendar. Each year, 4TU.AMI mathematicians contribute puzzles to this online calendar, and awards prizes to the top-scoring Dutch high school students. The top three scoring students for the 2024 edition of the calendar are:

1. Casper Heimel (Utrechts Stedelijk Gymnasium)
2. Arjen van der Schee (Van Lodenstein College Amersfoort)
3. Jouke Klumpers (Stanislascollege Westplantsoen Delft)

Over the past few months, Pim van 't Hof (PR/Communition Advisor for 4TU.AMI and lecturer at the University of Twente) and Nicos Starreveld (Communication and Publicity Officer of Platform Wiskunde Nederland) visited the three students at their schools to award the prizes.

With the help of their math teachers, we managed to keep our visit a secret to the pupils until the very last moment. For Arjen, there was an additional surprise: his teacher had also invited his parents and his grandfather (a former math teacher at the school) to attend the ceremony.

In Utrecht, we surprised Casper during a meeting of Cerebra, an extra-curricular association to prepare pupils for participation in bèta Olympiads. Casper is the driving force behind Cerebra, and he himself recently won the Benelux Mathematics Olympiad. No wonder Casper performed extremely well in the MATH+ Advent Calendar!

Casper Heimel received the first prize in the MATH+ Advent Calendar 2024 from Pim van 't Hof (4TU.AMI, UT). Also on the photo: a member of the school's student association 'Cerebra' and Casper's mathematics teacher.

Arjen van der Schee won the second prize in the MATH+ Advent Calendar 2024.

Jouke Klumpers won the third prize in the MATH+ Advent Calendar 2024.

In Amersfoort and Delft, Pim took over the regular mathematics classes for a workshop on mathematics and origami. The workshop was about the Fold-and-cut Theorem: the pupils were challenged to cut out some pre-drawn simple polygons from a piece of paper (after folding) using a single straight cut, before learning that any straight-line drawing can be cut out that way.

Pim van 't Hof (4TU.AMI, UT) explains under what conditions a piece of paper is 'flat-foldable'.

Did you know there is a way to fold this paper and cut out both letters with a single straight cut?

4TU.AMI congratulates Casper, Arjen and Jouke with their outstanding achievements, and looks forward to the upcoming edition of the MATH+ Advent Calendar.

Contibuting a puzzle

Do you have a nice puzzle (idea) that you would like to contribute to the upcoming edition of the MATH+ Advent Calendar? Then we would love to hear from you! Please contact Pim van ‘t Hof (p.vanthof@utwente.nl). See this page for more information about contributing a puzzle.