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.

• IMA Virtual Branch Talk

  Richard Lissaman gives a talk which involves interesting ideas in search engines, games and social networks.

• 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?