An attempt to establish the congruence of squares, a mathematical theory, fetched two 16-year-old teens from Davangere the fourth place in the recently-held Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in Phoenix, USA.
Nayana Ravindranath Koravatti and Aishwarya Chanchi Ashok, class 10 students of Amrita Vidyalayam, Davangere, secured the fourth award of $500 in the Mathematical Sciences category for their project on ‘Dissection of Square into N Congruent Squares’.
In many ways, the teens have overcome significant competition right from the state-level competition to the finals held from May 12 to 17. “It was sent to New Delhi as one 111 other science projects for a national-level exhibition. Later, seven projects were shortlisted and our project was finally selected,” Aishwarya said.
The girls received training at three stages under Prof Nyamathi Virupakshappa from the University DBT College of Engineering.
“The trainings helped us do our best at the international exhibition,” she added.
On May 14, ten expert scientists evaluated the projects that were displayed. Three days later, the project done by Nayana and Aishwarya got selected for the fourth place.
“For the exhibition,” Prof Virupakshappa said, “We used a mathematical formula of dividing the squares from four to any number of squares.”
The formula that was used was N=n square+1, where N represents number of small squares dissected and n represents number of divisions on lesser squares, he explained.
Ravindranath, an engineer, said he is proud of his daughter Nayana. As many as 1,299 projects by more than 2,500 students from 78 countries, including 71 mathematical projects were a part of ISEF.