Bakersfield College Math Students

Poster Projects, Spring 2006

Six Bakersfield College students presented posters at the spring 2006 meeting of the Mathematical Association of America. This year’s meeting of the Southern California/Nevada Section was held on April 8 at California State University, San Bernardino. The student poster session consisted of twenty-five projects presented by students from UC’s, California State Universities, Two-year colleges, and private schools.

The Math Behind the Madness: Motorcycle Cornering

Bryan Davenport

Meritorious Award

Racing motorcycles is a hobby of mine. I wanted to relate my practical knowledge to the theories involved in cornering a motorcycle, with the hopes of optimizing my path around one of the racetracks where I compete. I will be using mathematics to describe the shape of the front tire, relate the bike lean angle to the center of graity lean angle, calculate my cornering speed an find limits of the turn speed.

Advisors: Rebecca Head, Richard Darke

HEART RATE INVESTIGATIONS

David Guerrero

Meritorious Award

Ramon Valdez and David Guerreo

The heart rate response to a change in the intensity of a physical activity can give important information about the level of fitness of an individual. This investigation looks for a mathematical model that best describes the heart rate of fit people who have been exposed to a drastic change in the intensity of exercise. It is thought that immediately after the change in intensity the heart rate obeys a time-dependent function that can be a characteristic model for healthy people. This work looks for this function, and any important features of it that can be characteristic of our group of fit people. These features may be used to predict fitness and health.

Advisors: Rebecca Head, Rick Darke

Non-Spherical Celestial Orbits

Spring Poarch

My initial investigation was to see if the orbit of a satellite around a non-spherical planet (specifically an ellipsoid) would change if the center of mass was not the center of the planet. After investigation, we see that over time the orbit of the satellite does change. My project investigates how these changes happen and what the path of the orbit looks like.

Advisors: Rebecca Head, Mark Fisher

It’s raining pool pumps and plastic shards out there!

Dustin Movius, Jose Reyes, and Mathew Scott

Meritorious Award

Matthew Scott and Jose Reyes

This project deals with the phenomenon of why a pool pump would explode and hurl a thirty pound piece as high as sixty feet and far enough to damage one of the homes of a math faculty member at Bakersfield College. Aside from the application of mathematics to a real world scenario, another motive is the sheer consideration of what kind of forces would be required for something of this nature. Via the collected data, the force built up in the pool pump system will be determined.

Advisors: Rebecca Head, Rick Darke