ThatsMaths
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ThatsMaths is the blog for a series of articles on mathematics to be published in the Irish Times, starting on 19 July 2012. Among the goals of the articles are to Demystify Mathematics, Show the breathtaking power of the subject, Discuss a range of technological applications, Explain recent advances and developments and more!
ThatsMaths
8h ago
Panta Rhei — everything flows — said Heraclites, describing the impermanence of the world. He might well have said “everything vibrates”. From sub-atomic particles to the farthest reaches of the cosmos we find oscillations. Vibration is key for aircraft wing, motor engine and optical system design. Ocean tides forced by the Moon and seasonal variations ..read more
ThatsMaths
1M ago
Mathematics is used widely, playing a central role in science and engineering and, increasingly, in the social and biological sciences. But users seldom consider the fundamental nature of mathematics. Many cannot improve on the vacuous definition: mathematics is what is done by mathematicians. We could try harder, with something like “mathematics is the language of ..read more
ThatsMaths
1M ago
We consider a simple problem in probability: A thin rod is broken at random into three pieces. What is the probability that these three pieces can be used to form a triangle? This problem is solved without difficulty. If the rod is of unit length, aligned along the interval , we choose two points at ..read more
ThatsMaths
2M ago
The year 1905 was Albert Einstein’s “miracle year”. In that year, he published four papers in the renowned scientific journal Annalen der Physik. The first, on the photoelectric effect, established the quantum nature of light, and led to the award of a Nobel Prize some 17 years later. The second, on Brownian motion, confirmed the ..read more
ThatsMaths
3M ago
The weather of 2023 was certainly interesting, with broken records in Ireland and around the world. Newspaper articles attributed the cause of the heat waves, droughts, floods and fires to the climate pattern known as El Niño. Less restrained reports claimed that this year’s weather would be even more anomalous [TM253 or search for “thatsmaths ..read more
ThatsMaths
3M ago
The That’s Maths blog has been active since July 2012. This is post number 600. For the past eleven and a half years, there has been a post every Thursday. For a complete list in chronological order, just press the “Contents” button, or click here. The posts have covered a wide range of topics in ..read more
ThatsMaths
4M ago
In 1974, the brilliant Hungarian professor of architecture, Ernö Rubik, invented the puzzle that has made his name familiar all over the world. When it was mass-produced, from 1980 onwards, the cube became an international craze; vast numbers were made and they brought both great fun and great frustration to millions of children of all ..read more
ThatsMaths
4M ago
The rising temperatures of today’s climate are being linked to extreme weather, droughts, floods and intense storms, and global food and water supplies are coming under severe stress. While the current changes are unprecedented in their rapidity, climate variations in the past have had devastating consequences. What can we learn from them? [TM252 or search for ..read more
ThatsMaths
4M ago
The sieve of Eratosthenes is a method for finding all the prime numbers less than some maximum value by repeatedly removing multiples of the smallest remaining prime until no composite numbers less than or equal to remain. The sieve provides a means of partitioning the natural numbers. We examine this partition and derive an expression ..read more
ThatsMaths
4M ago
The logistic map is a simple second-order function on the unit interval: where is the variable value at stage and is the “growth rate”. For , the map sends the unit interval [0,1] into itself. It is a simple nonlinear difference equation, whose solutions exhibit both regular and erratic behaviour, and it is often used ..read more