Gauss: What to do with 120 dodecahedra

Dear grads, undergrads, and faculty,

Our GAUSS speaker today is David Gay. He'll be giving a talk titled,
"What to do with 120 dodecahedra." Note that this is information is
not the same as in the seminar announcement. His abstract will be
provided at the bottom of this e-mail.

This is where I usually type something like, "as always, snacks will
be provided." Often those snacks are store-bought cookies. However,
this week we at GAUSS have the distinct pleasure of announcing that
the snacks are being home-baked by our very own MT Padberg. So
whether you like cookies or you like dodecahedra, there are a plethora
of reasons to attend GAUSS today.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. feel free to
contact one of your GAUSS co-organizers. We reserve the right to
ignore you, but you shouldn't let that stop you. Have a wonderful week.

Your GAUSS co-organizers,
Trent and Ross


Speaker: David Gay
Title: What to do with 120 dodecahedra.
Date, time, location: Tuesday, October 26, 4:30 PM, 118 MLH

Abstract:
You'll also need an extra dimension to make this work. I'll describe a
way to glue 120 dodecahedra together in 4-dimensional space to make a
closed 4-dimensional version of a polyhedron. BTW, a dodecahedron is a
3-dimensional polyhedron built by gluing 12 pentagons together in
3-dimensional space. I'll also show you how to draw a dodecahedron, a
skill which might come in handy some day. And, BTW, a pentagon is a
2-dimensional polygon built by gluing 5 line segments together in
2-dimensional space. And a line segment is a 1-dimensional ...?