Space Maths: Teaching Resources

STEM Learning play host to a collection of teaching resources from the European Space Education Resource Office:

ESERO & STEM Learning: Space Teaching Resources: https://www.stem.org.uk/esero/resources

How to Draw an Ellipse

As part of an online session on Kepler's 1st & 2nd laws I described how to draw an ellipse using two pins, a pencil, and a loop of string. The participants asked for some instructions that they could use after the session, so here they are:

Hawking Radiation

There's plenty of maths in various areas of physics. Click below for a quick post explaining our understanding of Hawking radiation and its roots in mathematics.

Maths in a Minute: Hawking Radiation: https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-hawking-radiation

And find out more about black holes at Blogstronomy! 

Squashing the Curve: Pandemic Modeling

Towards the beginning of 2020's Covid-19 outbreak there was much talk about "flattening the curve" to reduce strain on medical services. This article, published in March, compares English government plans released at the time with an early study by Imperial College, London.

Squashing the curve? https://plus.maths.org/content/how-best-deal-covid-19

Maths as a Developer

Contrary to most experiences in internet-land, the comments are where to go for the meat of this discussion on Luke Garrigan's post asking where programmers and developers use mathematics. There are a broad variety of responses from

"we're doing a huge disservice to our CS students by teaching so much math,"

through

"I expect there's a fair bit of it around, it's just not acknowledged as such,"

to

"Even when most of the work I'm doing comes from an external library an understanding of the math behind the functions is the difference between success and frustrating failure."

Check it out at the link below. Maybe some of you will have experiences of your own to contribute so please do join in with the discussion!

Do you actually use maths as a developer? https://dev.to/lukegarrigan/do-you-actually-use-maths-as-a-developer-24cc

A Partition Enigma

Colin answers a question on partitioning numbers, prompted by an aspect of Enigma codebreaking discussed in Dermot Turing's book, X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken.

Ask Uncle Colin: A Partition Enigma: https://www.flyingcoloursmaths.co.uk/auc_enigma-md/

Could You be a Codebreaker?

A short set of activities designed to demonstrate a range of skills required by Bletchley Park's codebreakers, highlighting the intersection of a number of mathematical skills with things that are often not thought of as being mathematical (but very definitely are!)

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 18 ⚙️ - Could you be a Codebreaker?

Take a look at the list at the beginning of this activity sheet ⬇️ https://t.co/e5ZAPExfUI

Which skills do you already have? Which ones do you need to work on? pic.twitter.com/ldPRLcoVIX

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 16, 2020

Make Your Own Enigma Machine

The history of cryptology is one that is rife with examples of mathematics, with a significant burst of advancements in the first half of the 20th Century. An iconic player in this period is the Enigma machine,  arguably the most famous cryptographical device ever whilst also being the subject of many an varied misunderstandings and misconceptions. Where better to start understanding it, and its place in mathematical history, than by building a physical emulator of your own...

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 12 - Build and learn to use your own Crisp Tube Enigma machine! ⚙️

Instructions and printables can be found here ➡️ https://t.co/VT9iXCCRhT

Share your creations with us! 🔎 #MuseumFromHome pic.twitter.com/PQLwZArIbW

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 2, 2020

... and comparing it to the real thing?

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 12 - Build and learn to use your own Crisp Tube Enigma machine! ⚙️

Instructions and printables can be found here ➡️ https://t.co/VT9iXCCRhT

Share your creations with us! 🔎 #MuseumFromHome pic.twitter.com/PQLwZArIbW

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 2, 2020

Make a Caesar Wheel

The Caesar shift cipher was an early method of encrypting information and is often used as an entrypoint to the world of cryptography, cryptanalysis and cryptology, which is itself an inherently mathematical discipline.

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 02 - Make a Caesar Wheel and try encrypting your own messages ⚙️

Here's your very own Bletchley Park template and a how-to guide ➡️ https://t.co/7LdL5fKK6m

Try encrypting some messages and send them to family and friends! ✉️

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) April 9, 2020

The above challenge was followed a few days later by a further, related challenge:

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 09 ⚙️ - Make your Caesar Wheel messages harder to break!

If you have a Caesar wheel and know how to use it (see day two’s challenge!) you can make messages harder to break by using a key word (rather than just one shift).https://t.co/Fbl5c0Hb9j

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) April 25, 2020

Life Stats

Enter your date of birth and read some interesting statistics about the world since you came into it. Plenty of discussion starters here!

Life Stats:

https://neal.fun/life-stats/

Venus Transits and the Size of the Solar System

This entry in 2020's Big Lock-Down Math-Off hosted by the Aperiodical introducess the Venus transits of the 1600s and their importance in developing an early understanding of the true scale of our Solar system (when the page loads, scroll about half way down to find the article).

Venus Transits and the Size of the Solar System: https://aperiodical.com/2020/05/the-big-lock-down-math-off-match-23/

And you can find out more about Venus at Blogstronomy! 

American Football and Maths

Ex- professional American Footballer John Urschel is studying for a PhD in mathematics. In this Numberphile podcast he discusses his interest and career in both, touching on some of the crossovers between two disciplines many people would assume to be entirely separate.

Mathematical Quotes

Around 400 quotes about mathematics and from mathematicians, collated by Colin Beveridge of Flying Colours Maths.

Mathematical Quotes: https://www.flyingcoloursmaths.co.uk/mathematical-quotes/

100 (ish) of these are available for purchase as an ebook for Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3h0DVhv

Music and Maths: The Score

This episode of the Relatively Prime maths podcast explores just a small part of the intersection between mathematics and music. 

ACMEScience · Relatively Prime: The Score

Mathematics and Medicine: AI & Metabolites

Maths fan and Biotech entrepreneur  Leila Pirhaji shares her plan to build an AI network to improve understanding and treatment of disease. See her TED talk in the player below or find further details, a transcript and further reading on the TED website.

Social Distancing Rules: Bad Maths

In June 2020 the world was dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and "social distancing" was a buzzword for the time: everyone had to stay a given distance away from each other to reduce the chances of catching the virus or passing it on to someone else. There was much debate as to what this distance actually should be and, in the lead up to the potential reopening of shops in the UK, on 5th June The Guardian published this article:

One of the illustrations from the Guardian article

Plans to reopen shops in England 'in chaos' over social distancing rules

Study finds 10 sq metres of space is required per shopper to stick to government’s 2-metre guidelines

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/05/shops-reopen-england-social-distancing-rules-coronavirus

Maths teacher Mark Dawes found the original source for the mentioned study and wrote a critical piece about it and the article linked above, discovering and explaining some of the misconceptions and mistakes spanning both:

More than sums (blog) - Mathematically Distant: https://morethansums.blogspot.com/2020/06/mathematically-distant.html