This tricycle shouldn’t work.

The wheels are square, after all, and some kind of deep-seated intuition screams that such a shape would make any motion impossible. But the trike set into a circular track at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum is definitely moving. A small child is pumping the pedals without too much effort, and he’s making steady circuits.

Glen Whitney is quick to point out that the square-wheeled tricycle works because of the track. More importantly, it works thanks to math.

“There’s a mathematical principle that says there’s a road for every wheel,” said Whitney, a co-executive director of the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City. “You could draw any shape on a piece of paper and say, ‘That’s my wheel.’ It turns out you can always design a road surface for it.”

The square-wheeled trike is one of more than 30 pieces in the “Math Midway” touring exhibit currently on display at the Wings museum in Lowry. The theme of the exhibition is mathematics, but don’t expect to see any calculations on graph paper. The collection is all about putting a hands-on and fun spin on mathematical principles.

There’s a “Number Line Tightrope” designed to illustrate concepts of number families. A bunch of surveyor’s wheels are on hand for visitors to find the shortest route between many points. A “Polyhedral Plaza” includes movable puzzle pieces and lets enterprising kids build soma cubes and geometric shapes. The popular “Ring of Fire” exhibit uses laser light and translucent plastic pieces to uncover two-dimensional patterns in three-dimensional shapes.

“It’s a different perception of what mathematics is,” said Cindy Lawrence, another co-executive director of the Museum of Mathematics. “Teachers all over the place have told us how much they like that ‘Ring of Fire’ exhibit,” she added, pointing to the feedback the traveling exhibition has drawn at touring stops around the country.

That kind of enthusiasm is the best kind of validation for the exhibit’s creators, especially considering how many people balked when Glen Whitney started talking about building a museum devoted exclusively to math.

A former algorithm manager at a massive New York hedge fund, Whitney started his quest to build a math-centered museum more than three years ago. Before the National Museum of Mathematics opened its doors in New York in December, Whitney had to field plenty of skeptical questions.

“‘What are you going to have? Old calculators? A slide rule?’” Whitney recalled. “But mathematicians don’t think in terms of lists of numbers. They think in terms of images and shapes and things that can be made more tactile. We wanted to pick topics that you could make into physical experiences.”

The “Math Midway” exhibit was Whitney’s first answer to those objections. The exhibition — designed to recreate the look and feel of an old-fashioned midway arcade attraction — debuted in 2009 at the World Science Festival in Manhattan. The exhibit drew thousands of visitors in a single day, and proved that an educational museum piece based on mathematical precepts could be engaging and compelling.

The exhibit has been updated with new features since opening in 2009, but Lawrence said the mission of the piece hasn’t changed. Pieces like the “Ring of Fire” emphasizes principles that are part of the national common core standards for math. Those standards will be part of the updated testing requirements for students in Colorado and beyond.

But the exhibit is about more than prepping kids for standardized tests, Lawrence insists.

“We designed it to hit hard in the middle school years,” Lawrence said. “But what we found is that adults are equally engaged in the exhibit. We’re delighted by that.”

Whitney chalks up that popularity to the exhibit’s accessibility. Theorems and equations don’t feel so impossible when they’re illustrated through giant puzzle pieces, a mock organ grinder and a square-wheeled tricycle. The realm of mathematics becomes much more immediate when students of all ages can see the numbers come to life in tactile objects.

“People never get a chance to develop an intuition. They see math as an arbitrary set of rules to follow to get the right answer,” Whitney said. “Intuition comes through personal experiences.

“We need to have people to form an intuition about math,” he added.

Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at 720-449-9707 or agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com

The “Math Midway” exhibit

Runs until Dec. 31 at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, 771 E. Academy Blvd. in Denver.

Admission starts at $11

Information: 303-360-5360 or wingsmuseum.org.