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Speakers: 2:30 Darren Long, UCSB and 4:10 Howard Masur, Univ. Illinois at Chicago

Geometry/Topology

Speaker: Bay Area Topology Seminar, Spring meeting in Davis
Location: 693 Mathematics
Start time: Tue, May 4 2004, 2:30PM

Speaker: Howard Masur Title: Rational Billiards and Flat Surfaces Abstract: An important example of a dynamical system is given by billiards in polygons. Surprisingly almost nothing is known in general about this problem, but if the vertex angles are rational multiples of \pi a great deal can be said. This talk will be an attempt to give a survey of some of the highlights of work in this subject in the last 20 years. Speaker: Darren Long, UCSB Title: Deforming hyperbolic structures