First display centre – Inaugurated on the 28th of April 1999.
Second display centre – the rules of the rule - Inaugurated on the 29th of January 2000.
From time immemorial, mathematics has been known as the ‘queen of sciences’. It is however famous as being the most abstract and far from common sense among the exact sciences. Who of us as a student did not have to swallow the ‘bitter pill’ of this most noble way of thinking. It does not enjoy the best fame but causes a certain reverential fear in us all, or almost all. The Museum intends to bring schools and the public nearer to the culture of mathematics through the material use of ‘mathematical machines’. This is the easiest and most practical method possible to promote the use of this important subject.
The name recalls a charming lesser god of the Latin pantheon, Numeria, called upon to help small Roman scholars to calculate and measure. The idea is to create a real and proper ‘experimental civic centre’, the first in Italy that envisages two public institutions, the Municipality and the University, side by side.
Three types of museum objects, coming from the Capitoline collections, will be shown:
• Antique Roman calculating instruments
• The Klein collection, real and proper sculptures in plaster showing certain important surfaces for educational use
• Polyhedrons from the Graziotti Collection, geometrical models understood as the material embodiment of space properties.
The visit envisages a guided path where young people and adults can communicate with the objects on display, touch them, handle them and understand their use thanks to the expert guides accompanying the visitors. It is therefore not a ‘traditional’ Museum but a kind of ‘kitchen’ where each of you can open a ‘pantry’ and take the ingredients you consider necessary to ‘cook’ your favorite dish. Help is also given by the cards accompanying each group of objects and which may be taken away. Should you want to know more, there is also an educational catalogue available of course, illustrating the exhibition itinerary in detail.
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 | | | III Municipio
Dipartimento di Matematica, Università La Sapienza
P. le Aldo Moro 5
Bus 3,19,71,170,310,492
Events
Il Salotto della Memoria
Meetings for spreading the philosophy of mathematics from the 26th of February to the 10th of December. |  |
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