Mobius Strip: 'Endless Ribbon' Mystery Solved

Science Daily 26 July 2007:

Dr Eugene Starostin and Dr Gert van der Heijden (both from UCL Civil & Environmental Engineering) recently published the solution to a 75-year-old mystery.
A Möbius strip made with a piece of paper and tape. (Credit: David Benbennick / Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The two academics have discovered how to predict the shape of a Möbius strip, the ‘endless ribbon’ which is obtained by taking a rectangular strip of paper, twisting one end through 180 degrees, and then joining the ends.

Read more at Science Daily

Cryptography and Mathematics

Read the Neal Koblitz latest article, The Uneasy Relationship Between Mathematics and Cryptography from the American Mathematics Society.



The worlds of academic mathematical research and commercial and governmental application, with their occasionally distinct values and practices, meet and sometimes clash in the study and implementation of cryptosystems. The author describes his own experiences, and those of mathematical colleagues, in this intersection.

While you are at the AMS site, have a look at Artful Mathematics: The Heritage of M. C. Escher. Published in 2003, includes 3 very interesting articles on the Mathematics of Escher.

Statistics warning! Continue with caution!

It's is always interesting to see how mathematics and statistics is used in "the real world".

When looking at the latest news item, it is worth questioning all the data and assumptions made. So many of us take claims made by scientist, pressure groups, politicians and educationalists far too seriously without questioning them.

There are daily medical and environmental scare stories in the newspapers, which when examined carefully don't stand up, or if they do not the the extent made by the original articles.

Always be skeptical, so check out some nice sites ...

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Bjorn Lomberg - The Skeptical Environmentalist : interesting how some groups reacted to this book (available at Amazon). Have an open mind and look for yourself, and also have a read of an interesting article by Ronald Bailey at ReasonOnline.

ReasonOnline is the online home of the magazine Reason, a collection of free thinking articles on a variety of subjects.

Bad Science is a regular column in the Guardian by Ben Goldacre, always an interesting read for the latest take on science claims.

Another very interesting site is Responsible Thinking.

Have fun ...

Rich Starting Points for A Level Mathematics

I recently received some information about a new web site http://www.risps.net : (RiSPs = Rich Starting Points - for A Level Mathematics).

This site, run by Jonny Griffiths of Paston College, provides a wide range of mini investigative problems to start of some interesting work in mathematics.

These can be used as start of lesson warm up excercises or as end of lesson extended homework tasks.

The problems provide a very useful way of getting students to use and reinforce the mathematics they develop at A level standard, but without the tasks being too formal or difficult to start.

For example :

Risp 8. Arithmetic Simultaneous Equations

Pick six consecutive terms from an arithmetic sequence,

and place them in order into the spaces below.

__ x + __ y = __

__ x + __ y = __

Now solve this pair of simultaneous equations.

what do you discover ?

Symposium Journals

If you are interested in teaching and the education system, these online journals are a wonderful resource. The journals include :

• Symposium Homepage
• Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
• E-Learning
• European Education Research Journal
• Forum : for promoting 3-19 comprehensive education
• Policy Futures in Education
• Research in Comparative and International Education

Also, if you are interested in the history of British education, have a look at Derek Gillard's Homepage.

Stanford researchers calculate the mathematics of terror

Extract from the Stanford Report, March 3, 2006

BY JOHN B. STAFFORD

George Habash, a militant and former secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, once characterized terrorism as a "thinking man's game." Using mathematics, researchers at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) have made fighting terrorism a thinking man's game as well.

CISAC affiliate Lawrence M. Wein of the Graduate School of Business and CISAC Science Fellow Jonathan D. Farley are both applying mathematical models to homeland security problems, such as preventing a nuclear detonation in a major U.S. city and determining whether terrorist cells have likely been disrupted.

Read the full article :
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2006/march8/mterror-030806.html

Mathematics Resource Link

Whiteboard Resource Recommendation

WisWeb

A wonderful collection of applets that work so well on an interactive whiteboard. The site comes from the Freudenthal Instituut and APS-wiskunde in collaboration with several schools. Some examples of the resources are :
Balancing Equations
Building Houses

Try these out - they work very well in class or as independent study.

Web Site Recommendation

MathsNet

An excellent website that I use all the time when I teach. Mainly for A Level teaching, it covers most topics in the main modules available for both AS and A2 years, and the interactive past paper questions are wonderful to use a key points in a lesson. remarkably it is all free !!!. There is a GCSE version but this is a subscription service, but worth a look

Welcome

Welcome to the 2july blog.

I'm hoping to keep this up to date with news, events and other education based information that I hope will be of interest to you.

If you have something you wish to share with others, let me know and I'll post it here.