Ages 14-18
Online Zoom 
2:00-4:00 PM ET
June 22, 29; July 6, 13
$125
Class Size: 4-9 Students

Geometry and Imagination: A Journey Through Flatland

What to Expect

If a line segment and a square pass each other on the street, who has the right of way? Why are triangles nervous around circles? Can a dodecahedron have an identity crisis? And what exactly is a rhombicosidodecahedron and why is it trying to steal all the letters?

In this 4-week adventure, we'll read Edwin Abbott's wonderfully strange Victorian classic Flatland while learning how to construct polygons and other geometric marvels with a good old fashioned ruler and compass. We'll investigate impossible objects, peek into higher dimensions, and ask stunningly peculiar questions about the nature of reality. 

Together we'll read Flatland and explore a menagerie of geometric creatures including triangles, hexagons, dodecahedrons, tessellations, cross-sections, polyhedra, and maybe even a tesseract.

Along the way we'll construct, conjecture, discuss, doodle, question, and sometimes stare for a long time into the page while muttering, "Wait... what?"

Part book club, part geometry workshop, part thought experiment, this course invites students to question assumptions, sharpen their reasoning, stretch their imaginations, and accidentally learn a surprising amount of mathematics while having fun. 

Perfect for curious students who enjoy puzzles, stories, strange ideas, and words that require at least three attempts to pronounce correctly. Expect compass-and-ruler constructions, visual puzzles, mathematical mischief, and philosophical rabbit holes. 

No prior geometry experience is needed. Curiosity is required. A sense of wonder is highly recommended.

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.” ― Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Weekly Schedule

Read, Discuss, Draw

Each week we will read a section of the novel together, discussing as we go along. Then we’ll use a compass and ruler to draw and discover some amazing geometric wonders!


Class Begins

2:00 PM Eastern


Reading

2:00 PM-3:00 PM


Stretch Break

3:00 PM-3:05 PM


Creative Workshop

3:05 PM-4:50 PM


Class Dismissed

3:55 PM-4:00 PM


Book Your Place

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