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Thinking outside the box
Sonia Buckley Sonia Buckley travels through higher dimensions June 2009This article is the runner-up in the university category of the Plus new writers award 2009."Fine. The next person who comes in...
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Secrets from a bathroom floor
Josefina Alvarez and Cesar L. Garcia Tilings have adorned buildings from ancient Rome to the Islamic world, from Victorian England to colonial Mexico. But while it sometimes seems free from worldly...
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The story of the Gömböc
Marianne Freiberger A Gömböc is a strange thing. It looks like an egg with sharp edges, and when you put it down it starts wriggling and rolling around as if it were alive. Until quite recently,...
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Outer space: On a clear day
John D. Barrow ..You can see forever. Or can you? September 2009R is the radius of the Earth, H is your height and D is how far you can see.read more
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The power of origami
Liz Newton We've all heard of origami. It's all about making paper birds and pretty boxes, and is really just a game invented by Japanese kids, right? Prepare to be surprised as Liz Newton takes you...
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How long is a day?
Nicholas Mee The obvious answer is 24 hours, but, as Nicholas Mee discovers, that would be far too simple. In fact, the length of a day varies throughout the year. If you plot the position of the Sun...
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How to make a perfect plane
Burkard Polster and Marty Ross Two lines in a plane always intersect in a single point ... unless the lines are parallel. This annoying exception is constantly inserting itself into otherwise simple...
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Uncovering the cause of cholera
London, September, 1853. A cholera outbreak has decimated Soho, killing 10% of the population and wiping out entire families in days. Current medical theories assert that the disease is spread by "bad...
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Visual curiosities and mathematical paradoxes
Linda Becerra and Ron Barnes When your eyes see a picture they send an image to your brain, which your brain then has to make sense of. But sometimes your brain gets it wrong. The result is an optical...
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Exotic spheres, or why 4-dimensional space is a crazy place
Richard Elwes The world we live in is strictly 3-dimensional: up/down, left/right, and forwards/backwards, these are the only ways to move. For years, scientists and science fiction writers have...
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Leaning into 2012
Rising like a giant pringle from the Olympic Park construction site, the Velodrome is the first of the 2012 London Olympic venues to be completed. With its sweeping curved roof and beautiful cedar clad...
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Meet the gyroid
Adam G. Weyhaupt What do butterflies, ketchup, microcellular structures, and plastics have in common? It's a curious minimal surface called the gyroid. What do butterflies, ketchup, microcellular...
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Maths behind the rainbow
Marianne Freiberger The only good thing about a wash-out summer is that you get to see lots of rainbows. Keats complained that a mathematical explanation of these marvels of nature robs them of their...
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Bridges, string art and Bézier curves
Renan Gross The Jerusalem Chords Bridge, Israel, was built to make way for the city's light rail train system. Its design took into consideration more than just utility — it is a work of art, designed...
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Watch out, it's behind you!
The Plus team's vehicle of choice is the bicycle, so we're particularly pleased about an announcement that hit the news this month: a clever car mirror that eliminates the dreaded blind spot has been...
View ArticleMaths in a minute: Not always 180
Over 2000 years ago the Greek mathematician Euclid came up with a list of five postulates on which he thought geometry should be built. One of them, the fifth, was equivalent to a statement we are all...
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3D printing mathematics
Saul Schleimer and Henry Segerman Saul Schleimer and Henry Segerman show off some of their beautiful 3D printed mathematical structures.When learning about existing mathematics, and especially when...
View ArticleMaths in a minute: Triangle central
How do you balance a cardboard cut-out of a triangle on a pencil? Trial and error is one way, but maths can save you lots of bending down and picking it up. Take the pencil and a ruler and connect the...
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Polar power
Marianne Freiberger Like spirals and flowers? Then you'll love polar coordinates and the pretty pictures they allow you to draw!Cartesian coordinates. read more
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Circles rolling on circles
Yutaka Nishiyama Imagine a circle with radius 1 cm rolling completely along the circumference of a circle with radius 4 cm. How many rotations did the smaller circle make? Be prepared for a...
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