Mathematics

Hula hooping is so commonplace that we may overlook some interesting questions it raises: “What keeps a hula hoop up against gravity?” and “Are some body types better for hula hooping than others?” A team […]

With billions of children around the world anxiously waiting for their presents, Father Christmas (or Santa) and his reindeer must be traveling at breakneck speeds to deliver them all in one night.This post was originally […]

The manic pace of sharing, storing, securing, and serving data has a manic price—power consumption. To counter this, Virginia Tech mathematicians are leveraging algebraic geometry to target the inefficiencies of data centers.This post was originally […]

Half a decade on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study by the University of Surrey highlights the significant impact of combined public health measures in reducing airborne viral transmission. High-quality face masks […]

A collaborative study between the University of Helsinki, Aarhus University, the National Museum of Denmark and Seattle University examined the cognitive, cultural and historical significance of traditional string figures. The study explored whether certain string […]

Nonlinear dynamical systems are systems that can undergo sudden shifts not due to changes in their state or stability, but in response to the rate at which external conditions or parameters change. These sudden shifts, […]

We know a knight can move across the chessboard faster than the king, but exactly how much faster? Christian Táfula Santos, a doctoral student in UdeM’s Department of Mathematics, has done the math and his […]

A mathematician at Yonsei University, in Korea, claims to have solved the moving sofa problem. Jineon Baek has posted a 100+-page proof of the problem on the arXiv preprint server.This post was originally published on […]

What do you remember about math at school? Did you whizz through the problems and enjoy getting the answers right? Or did you often feel lost and worried you weren’t keeping up? Perhaps you felt […]

A breakthrough in the theory of climate change science has given scientists the most robust way yet to link observed climate change to both human-made and natural causes and to spot early warning signals for […]