What's up world-travelers and friends!
This morning started off with a bang as all of us students put our navigational skills to the test in order to get from the dorms to the IES building. Unlike yesterday, our wonderful trip coordinator Nicky wasn't there to lead us through the tube, so we were on our own. Luckily, everyone managed to find their way with at least moderate punctuality.
Once the crew was all assembled, the Fabulous Dr. Woodard followed up his counting lesson with an explanation of how to use permutations as mathematical objects. A permutation, as you may remember from previous blogposts, is an ordered list without repetitions. Permutations show up all the time in cryptography. For instance, a list of the 26 English letters in a randomized order is a permutation of the alphabet. Many ciphers work by taking a given letter in the original message (called the plaintext) and enciphering it as a different letter (this is called the ciphertext). When each letter of the alphabet in the plaintext is changed to one and only corresponding letter in the ciphertext (with no two letters of the alphabet being enciphered to the same letter), this relationship can be thought of as a permutation function, and translated into mathematical notation.
The nitty-gritty of the notation itself would be a bit technical for a fun, breezy blogpost, but suffice it to say that Wizard Woodard showed us some of the mathematical magic that Polish cryptanalysts used to take down the German Enigma cipher machine. In fact, this breakthrough was instrumental to the eventual Allied supremacy in secret communication.
Though the morning was a bit rainy and dreary, the weather cleared up in time for a delightful lunch outside the IES building. Shortly after, we fulfilled Kali Javetski's lifelong dream of riding on a double-decker bus on our way to the Imperial War Museum.
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| Hannah and Makayla sitting at the front of the double decker bus! |
This afternoon we headed to the Imperial War Museum. We were split up into two groups and while one group had a guided tour of the WWII section, the other was able to wander around the rest of the museum and see the other exhibits such as WWI and the holocaust and then vice versa.
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| Dr. Woodard took a selfie with the tank on the tour |
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| One of the groups during their tour |
To end of the day, we headed to Mercato Metropolitana for a group dinner. It was this huge place with a bunch of different food stalls for you to pick between. A majority of us went to the pasta stand, some had thai, and a few other options.
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