Circle Packings and Circle Arrangements: Searching for Common Ground
Speaker:
Ken Stephenson, University of Tennessee
Date and Time:
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Abstract:
Circle packings are configurations of circles having prescribed patterns of tangency. They are not traditional 2D sphere arrangements because it is their tangency "patterns" that are specified, while the individual circle sizes are flexible. However, there is an "edge-flipping" operation on combinatorics which leads to interesting dynamics in circle packing. Experiments suggest that some common ground may emerge with the spherical arrangement community--- and there may be a few practical applications as well.