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In Fill Me Up we invited you to sketch graphs as vessels are filled with water. Can you work out the equations of the graphs?
This task develops spatial reasoning skills. By framing and asking questions a member of the team has to find out what mathematical object they have chosen.
Various solids are lowered into a beaker of water. How does the water level rise in each case?
A plastic funnel is used to pour liquids through narrow apertures. What shape funnel would use the least amount of plastic to manufacture for any specific volume ?
Can Jo make a gym bag for her trainers from the piece of fabric she has?
Proofs that there are only seven frieze patterns involve complicated group theory. The symmetries of a cylinder provide an easier approach.
A look at different crystal lattice structures, and how they relate to structural properties
What 3D shapes occur in nature. How efficiently can you pack these shapes together?
How do we measure curvature? Find out about curvature on soccer and rugby balls and on surfaces of negative curvature like banana skins.
Shows that Pythagoras for Spherical Triangles reduces to Pythagoras's Theorem in the plane when the triangles are small relative to the radius of the sphere.
Prove Pythagoras' Theorem for right-angled spherical triangles.
Use simple trigonometry to calculate the distance along the flight path from London to Sydney.
How much peel does an apple have?
What's the most efficient proportion for a 1 litre tin of paint?
Find the distance of the shortest air route at an altitude of 6000 metres between London and Cape Town given the latitudes and longitudes. A simple application of scalar products of vectors.
A spherical balloon lies inside a wire frame. How much do you need to deflate it to remove it from the frame if it remains a sphere?
A right circular cone is filled with liquid to a depth of half its vertical height. The cone is inverted. How high up the vertical height of the cone will the liquid rise?
The interplay between the two and three dimensional Euclidean geometry of conic sections is explored in this article. Suitable for students from 16+, teachers and parents.
This article outlines the underlying axioms of spherical geometry giving a simple proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle on the surface of a unit sphere is equal to pi plus the area of the triangle.
Imagine two identical cylindrical pipes meeting at right angles and think about the shape of the space which belongs to both pipes. Early Chinese mathematicians call this shape the mouhefanggai.
What is the shortest distance through the middle of a dodecahedron between the centres of two opposite faces?
What is the volume of the solid formed by rotating this right angled triangle about the hypotenuse?
A circle has centre O and angle POR = angle QOR. Construct tangents at P and Q meeting at T. Draw a circle with diameter OT. Do P and Q lie inside, or on, or outside this circle?
If a ball is rolled into the corner of a room how far is its centre from the corner?
Two circles of equal size intersect and the centre of each circle is on the circumference of the other. What is the area of the intersection? Now imagine that the diagram represents two spheres of equal volume with the centre of each sphere on the surface of the other. What is the volume of intersection?