News Detail
Connecting through Mathematics
Because as math department chair, I have always been proud of the talented mathematicians who have graced FA’s classrooms over the years, I decided to arrange for some FA math scholars of the past to be in the same (Zoom) room with some of FA math scholars of the future, specifically the Middle School Math team, and see what might transpire.
Our first visitor was Shelley Kandola ’09, whose work with relative sizes of infinities has earned her speaking opportunities around the world. Shelley enthralled the FA students with her study of “infinity and beyond.” After graduating from Falmouth Academy, Shelley majored in mathematics at St. Lawrence University, where she joined the math team and worked with the Mandelbrot Competition, a series of questions designed to inspire middle and high school math students to explore topics beyond their school’s curriculum.
Now in the midst of completing her postdoctoral research at Michigan State University, Shelley relayed to our students her delight at watching her own students experience those “Ah-ha” moments when they finally grasp a challenging or perplexing concept. To get our team thinking, she posed the following example question:
Two sisters go up 40-step escalators. The older sister rides the up escalator, but can only take 10 steps up during the ride since it is quite crowded. The younger sister runs up the empty down escalator, arriving at the top at the same time as her sister. How many steps does the younger sister take?
As students pondered this query, Shelley talked about the research she has been doing in comparing the size of infinities, a concept which led to some fascinating student questions; they had errantly believed that infinity had only one size. Shelley’s talk even inspired Emma Bena ’26 to email Shelley to find out exactly what inspired her interest in infinity. As Shelley wrapped up, students returned to the escalator problem, and Sebastian Verslycke ’26 skillfully explained his correct solution to the problem. (Alas, slightly more complicated than can be explained in this space, so I urge you to try it yourself!)
Our second guest was Molly Lippsett ’09, with whom my daughter is currently working in the security and encryption department at Google. In preparation for her presentation, the team worked on code-breaking and Caesar ciphers. Molly joined the students from the west coast, delivering a fascinating presentation about her undergraduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. While she specialized in number theory and ultimately cryptology and code-breaking, she took courses in many branches of mathematics, particularly Calculus, and felt that she could have chosen many different alternatives as her concentration.
Molly discussed her thesis, which involved the use of large prime numbers to encode messages sent across electronic media. She presented the concepts of “computationally infeasible” to describe the security provided by using a particular algorithm based on these large prime numbers, highlighting the need for carefully chosen passwords in every context and explained how easy it can be for a hacker to learn passwords used repeatedly. The students enthusiastically peppered her with questions about how to secure their own devices and how to protect themselves on the internet. Molly surprised the students by suggesting that her lack of coding experience in high school may have actually helped her become a better coder since she was starting fresh with her introduction to a new coding language. When asked what best prepared her for a career in coding, she gave credit to her math studies in high school and college, but she also said that the extensive writing and editing she did for FA English classes made the biggest difference because it trained her to be able to read code critically and carefully edit the lines of code just as one might an English paper.
Finally, as proof that there’s more to life than numbers, Molly shared her passion and talent for hula hooping. She is part of a professional hula hoop troupe in Santa Cruz called the “Hoopin’ Honeys,” who, before the pandemic, traveled around the Santa Cruz area performing and teaching hooping techniques.
The FA Middle School Math team and I greatly appreciated the presentations from these two impressive FA alumnae, which has inspired us to continue our extracurricular pursuit of mathematics.
Our first visitor was Shelley Kandola ’09, whose work with relative sizes of infinities has earned her speaking opportunities around the world. Shelley enthralled the FA students with her study of “infinity and beyond.” After graduating from Falmouth Academy, Shelley majored in mathematics at St. Lawrence University, where she joined the math team and worked with the Mandelbrot Competition, a series of questions designed to inspire middle and high school math students to explore topics beyond their school’s curriculum.
Now in the midst of completing her postdoctoral research at Michigan State University, Shelley relayed to our students her delight at watching her own students experience those “Ah-ha” moments when they finally grasp a challenging or perplexing concept. To get our team thinking, she posed the following example question:
Two sisters go up 40-step escalators. The older sister rides the up escalator, but can only take 10 steps up during the ride since it is quite crowded. The younger sister runs up the empty down escalator, arriving at the top at the same time as her sister. How many steps does the younger sister take?
As students pondered this query, Shelley talked about the research she has been doing in comparing the size of infinities, a concept which led to some fascinating student questions; they had errantly believed that infinity had only one size. Shelley’s talk even inspired Emma Bena ’26 to email Shelley to find out exactly what inspired her interest in infinity. As Shelley wrapped up, students returned to the escalator problem, and Sebastian Verslycke ’26 skillfully explained his correct solution to the problem. (Alas, slightly more complicated than can be explained in this space, so I urge you to try it yourself!)
Our second guest was Molly Lippsett ’09, with whom my daughter is currently working in the security and encryption department at Google. In preparation for her presentation, the team worked on code-breaking and Caesar ciphers. Molly joined the students from the west coast, delivering a fascinating presentation about her undergraduate work in mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. While she specialized in number theory and ultimately cryptology and code-breaking, she took courses in many branches of mathematics, particularly Calculus, and felt that she could have chosen many different alternatives as her concentration.
Molly discussed her thesis, which involved the use of large prime numbers to encode messages sent across electronic media. She presented the concepts of “computationally infeasible” to describe the security provided by using a particular algorithm based on these large prime numbers, highlighting the need for carefully chosen passwords in every context and explained how easy it can be for a hacker to learn passwords used repeatedly. The students enthusiastically peppered her with questions about how to secure their own devices and how to protect themselves on the internet. Molly surprised the students by suggesting that her lack of coding experience in high school may have actually helped her become a better coder since she was starting fresh with her introduction to a new coding language. When asked what best prepared her for a career in coding, she gave credit to her math studies in high school and college, but she also said that the extensive writing and editing she did for FA English classes made the biggest difference because it trained her to be able to read code critically and carefully edit the lines of code just as one might an English paper.
Finally, as proof that there’s more to life than numbers, Molly shared her passion and talent for hula hooping. She is part of a professional hula hoop troupe in Santa Cruz called the “Hoopin’ Honeys,” who, before the pandemic, traveled around the Santa Cruz area performing and teaching hooping techniques.
The FA Middle School Math team and I greatly appreciated the presentations from these two impressive FA alumnae, which has inspired us to continue our extracurricular pursuit of mathematics.
© Falmouth Academy. All Rights Reserved.