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From May 29 to June 1 this year, the Place Saint-Sulpice once again played host to the salon de la culture et des jeux mathématiques (the cultural and mathematical games fair) on the theme ‘Nature and Mathematics. The INRIA researchers made the public discover mathematics with fun.
The DIGIPLANTE research team uses mathematics for modeling plant growth. This work has led to the birth to the Green Lab program, which utilizes a variety of parameters (water supply, light, the number of plants per square meter) to predict and improve the control over plant production.
DIGIPLANTE is a mixture of mathematicians, IT specialists, agronomists and botanists: genuinely multi-disciplinary. Philippe De Reffye: “We work together, because any of us may find themselves behind a screen or in the greenhouses and the fields.”
The Green Lab applications:
Despite the effectiveness of the model, Philippe de Reffye reckons that another ten years or so are needed to convince the main players in the plant production sector before Green Lab will really be part of agronomic practice.
> Download the poster (in French).
> Read more on the DIGIPLANTE research (in French).
Dominique Halpérin, professor of mathematics and a member of the international committee on mathematical games (CJIM), which organizes the fair, took a group of third-year pupils from the François Couperin school round. “They are here as part of their vocational studies, but the idea is above all to get them to manipulate math in a more straightforward way than is done in their lessons.”
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A funny atmosphere on the INRIA stand. |
A group of ten or so students gathered around the INRIA snakes and ladders game. The atmosphere soon warmed up after the hosts encourage them with a few questions. Gentle cajoling and the competitive spirit got the teenagers thinking seriously – as a question of honor! An isolated visitor, attracted by the whoops of victory or disappointment, remarked maliciously, “The playful aspect and this healthy emulation are certainly what this fair is all about, but I’m astonished that a generation that uses computers to say ‘no’ is sometimes so little at home with the vocabulary – ‘cookie’, ‘byte’… It’s as if it’s all become so natural to them that they don’t even need to bother mastering the basics!”
The second INRIA stand, entitled ‘Math makes plants,’ uses modeling to simulate plant growth. “We’re looking at the way a plant grows, depending on the water and light you give it,” was how one pupil summarizes it. But far from being a simple vegetable ‘tamagochi’, the Green Lab mathematical model aims above all to be a tool for classical agronomy. The explanations given by Philippe de Reffye seemed to leave some of the group confused, perhaps because they are no longer used to the idea of manipulating algorithms. Unless there was perhaps a certain degree of timidity stopping the pupils from asking the researcher any more questions…
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A group of pupils captivated
by Paul-Henry |
The public on Saturday, June 1 was both more family-based and better informed and they did not hesitate to call upon the people manning the stand to get more detail about Green Lab and watch the program in action. One father and his small son, intrigued by the projected images of plants growing, came closer to listen to Philippe de Reffye. They scuttle away quickly, somewhat embarrassed. “That’s at a pretty high level of math,” commented the father.“I don’t understand all of it, but it’s incredible to see some of the concrete results that math can produce!” A group of three students all seemed to understand the algorithms underlying Green Lab. “I had all that in a course last year,” bragged one of them.
A bit later, it was a dashing man in his sixties who could be found drinking in the researcher’s demonstrations. “It’s really fascinating what they can simulate nowadays. I’m a vet, not a mathematician or an agronomist. I can imagine that an application like this could help breeders, or model the progress of an illness in an animal… What a revolution!” These are perspectives that will demand a great deal more work, but it all goes to show once again that the discoveries in mathematics are by no means exhausted yet, and this “Nature and Mathematics” fair leaves the door wide open for more research.
Cécile Fradin, Technoscope.
