Recreational Math and Science: In the Classrooms and Beyond

A faculty seminar I gave on mathematics for the joy of it, with four stops: card tricks with a secret mathematical skeleton, the Cantor set and its counterintuitive properties, the fold-and-cut problem (cutting any shape out of folded paper with a single straight cut), and polynomials. Each is easy to state, rewards play, and leads somewhere deeper, which is what makes recreational problems a pleasant way into serious ideas.