Topics of Interest

Articles and features of mathematicial interest.

If there is anything you would like included please email your ideas to  webmaster@ima.org.uk - all suggestions will be considered.

• Eureka

  The Archimedeans, the Cambridge University Mathematical Society, have recently published issue 62 of Eureka, their annual mathematics magazine. Authors include Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, John Conway and Stephen Wolfram, as well as many other mathematicians and students.

• Turing for the Tenner

  The IMA is supporting member Andrea Donafee CMath MIMA (Managing Director, Cash Management Solutions) in the campaign to make Alan Turing the face of the new £10 note.

• Maths Busking

  Maths Busking aims to show the public the surprising and fascinating side of mathematics through the medium of street performance.

• Designing Bloodhound SSC - the 1,000 mph Car

  The primary objective of the BLOODHOUND Project is to inspire the next generation to pursue careers in science, engineering, technology and maths - by demonstrating how they can be harnessed to achieve the seemingly impossible, such as the BLOODHOUND 1,000 mph land speed record.

• Geometric Magic Squares

  Even non-mathematicians are these days familiar with latin squares in the guise of soduko puzzles. But of course the elements that appear in a latin square need not be numbers. They may be any objects, including for instance a set of distinct rectangles.

• It's all in the detail

  Cryptonite is not the first thing you expect to find in a beautiful rambling old house in the hills above Perth, Western Australia. But that, along with a bioraptor from the scifi movie Pitch Black, Rygel from television show Farscape and the foot of Olympic silver medallist Eamon Sullivan, is exactly what I discovered in the basement office of headus — a 3D scanning and software company run by Phil Dench and Jill Smith.

• What makes an object into a musical instrument?

  Many things make a noise when you hit them, but not many are commonly used to play music — why is that?