Help us make a maths discovery centre in the UK
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- Опубликовано: 7 июл 2024
- I'm talking to Dr Katie Chicot CEO of Maths World UK ( mathsworlduk.com/ ) - an organisation dedicated to creating a maths discovery centre in the UK.
Although maths discovery centres exist in other countries we have nothing like it in the UK, that is what Maths World UK want to change.
We ask for your ideas for what you would like to see in a maths discovery centre and show off a few puzzles and pretty mathematical objects.
At the moment Maths World UK has funding to creating a travelling exhibition that will be visiting science centres. Maths World UK are currently looking for funding to create a permanent home.
I really want to see a maths discovery centre in UK, but at the moment we have no permanent home. So if you know any friendly millionaires, let them know. (That's not a joke, that's what we need).
Here is a suggestion. Why not make secret areas that you can only visit by solving a (easy) maths puzzle. That would make the museum-experience more like an escape room thing.
It would be hard to coordinate a discriminating door as part of an open space, since as soon as one child opened the area, many around would follow and most likely not close the door. It’s probably also not a good idea to encourage children to go into an area that is separate from where their parents were (whether they are being negligent or not.)
I don’t know how escape rooms have worked with children in the past, but they tend to get quite bored with long series of riddles and problems particularly if they are maths oriented. This sort of thing is good for small businesses being paid for time slots, but in a museum-type experience problems like queueing, resetting puzzles between groups, and managing the time spent in the room would introduce a lot of stress to the system.
@@CharlieQuartz I think you bring up good points that need to be considered. It was just an idea. Maybe there is a way to implement such a thing in a way that solves some of the problems you mentioned, maybe not. I don't know enough about organizing escape rooms or how to run a museum to say for sure. But what I do know is that a lot of children (and grown ups) like challanges in the form of puzzles and they might get a lot of satisfaction out of finding a secret room. I think it is worth considering such an idea in the future. When it comes to small children who still need parental oversight it wouldn't have to be a strict system and only lets people in who solved the mystery themselves. I don't know. It's just that museums very often sound and are boring to children whereas escape rooms are not.
For example, exit out of the building?
Charlie You could have some sort of turnstile which only lets one person through.
@@CharlieQuartz Perhaps a puzzle maze? So parents and children enter together in groups and answer puzzles as they go round a maze - that way parents can stay with children and large groups of children wouldn't just get to rush through at the same time.
All of Prof. Tadashi Takeda's toys in one room.
Why only toys,it will have all the objects which are topologically same !
Litterally the best thumbnail I’ve seen all year.
Same
I happened to have it, and once my friend was like , what's it for? I was like maybe a bangle or maybe a crown....lol
Cliff’s Klein Bottles!! Totally should have a topology section
The trouble with topology is showing how it is relevant. It's relatively easy to explain what kind subject topology is (With classic examples as Klein bottles, moebius strips, knots and dougnuts/coffee cups), but the actual mathematics are not all that accessible. 3blue1brown has a brilliant demonstration of a concrete example of "practical" use of topology. I'm thinking of the fact that in any closed curve you can always find four points that describe a rectangle. It's amazing! And quite easy to follow. What ever they do, they should really have a good talk with Grant Sanderson!
Have a room with Henry Segerman's 3D-printed stereographic projection models
THIS
THIS
Graph theory stuff can be pretty interactive. Numberphile did a video where they used cut-outs on a floor map to try to solve the Koeningsburg bridge problem.
A simple one-on-one game where kids regularly beat adults. Each player has a screen (and can't see the other person's screen). They have the numbers 1-9 in front of them, and take turns picking one. Whoever first gets three numbers that sum to 15 wins. Or, at least, that's what the adults think. The kids play tic-tac-toe.
A 'WET ROOM' - demonstrating flows, circuits / analogy with electricity / analogue with ventilation air flow - pressure (force) / height (head) relationships, whirlpool 'vector' fields (contrast fire tornatdo), wave container, 2nd order control system connected tank filling, Plumbing heating thermodynamic efficiency w.d. = flow X change in temp, central heating system, boiler efficiency, steam raising, etc. Large wire conic section with laser level moving demonstrating curves, large curve race connecting / contrasting shortest distance with brachistochrone, wheels, pulleys gear ratios, hydraulics, compressed air cylinders = pressure / force / area etc etc --- I think about this endlessly !
They should hire you!
(Sorry if this is comment shows up twice, for some reason my old comment vanished lol)
-Banach tarski paradoxon as an animation
-Mandelbrot zoom animation and easy explanation
-largest prime and interesting facts about prime numbers
-cool looking functions or making pictures out of functions like the Batman symbol
-math tricks which you can do in your head, like finding the thrid square of a number. People will try this on the spot!
- connecting pictures of mathematicians with their name and their 'most known equation'. At the end you get information about their life, maybe some fun facts about them
eule franz banach-tarski requires the axiom of choice though, so I’m not sure how to animate it? I guess one could animate it for just, the points obtained through starting with a few initial points before doing the rotations? That might work..
recursively generated fractals (e.g. Sierpinski Triangle, Koch Snowflake) where visitors can tweak the generator function.
Solids of constant width.
Non transitive dice.
Maybe also the Mandelbrot set, in which you can zoom in and explore for yourself
Or a Julia set generator, and you can change the seed.
The matchbox AI that learns to play tic tac toe, as demonstrated by your friend Matt Parker.
A whole AI and computation set would be cool! Now is there a good way to get people of all ages building a half adder?
They have to make sure it's not a Parker Matchbox first, though.
You should ask standupmaths for cooperation
Julian Ha
Given that he’s been a maths teacher and runs mathsgear.co.uk with James here and Steve Mould, I am sure Matt Parker has at least some ideas of what a maths centre needs.
I mean, it's a fun looking puzzle game, but it's not really exposing the math part. And that's the problem with most math centres; they provide fun games and toys, but they don't expose any of the math to make the math itself interesting rather than just an interesting game.
Daniel my initial reaction as well. Every puzzle needs to be grouped with a presentation of a general solution.
Yeah. That's part of the problem, but one should not forget that these sorts of things are also ment to inspire mathematical thought. I guess the more mathematical minded people will be the ones to actually be "mathematically" inspired by such puzzles. Maybe some kind of hand holding is needed to inspire those not as mathematically inclined. Pretty and amazing objects is not enough. Simple paradoxical puzzles like the Monty Hall problem is quite easy to implement and demonstrate though, and will kind of force you to consider the why's. Other statistical paradoxes like the Simpsons paradox is also food for thought. It's quite contra intuitive. Simple combinatorics should also be inspiring I guess.
The sort of children who'd be interested in this game will be learning their times tables and fractions. The math's behind almost all of these suggestions is way above what your average kid can be expected to learn properly. That's not the point of these exhibits; the point is to have fun with something interactive and maybe apply some rudimentary problem-solving skills if the child is inclined.
For things like the pendulums, the only thing you can hope to do is introduce interesting real-life objects to the child. Just touching the pendulums and seeing how they swing will be an amazing experience for a child, and when they learn about the maths and physics in high-school it will be easier and more intuitive.
I had the same skepticism too at first, but I think the idea is not to teach the math, but rather to present situations that provoke mathematical thought. Of course, it always helps to have a good teacher who can guide people to ask the right questions and nudge them in the right direction, but there's also a lot to be said for getting some hands on experience playing around with these puzzles and toys, even without a robust mathematical approach. Engagement with these toys will help lay the foundation for what kids need to become great thinkers and problem solvers in the future.
Amazing, a fantastic cause and very much hope this catches on and heads out to Australia too.
Some sort of programming thing where the computation comes from physical objects. Falling things, spinning things, things fitting together to do some simple task. Maybe to move something out of a small maze.
John Doe
A marble binary adder?
I'm not in the UK, but the first two things I thought of were the Non Transitive Grime Dice from mathsgear.co.uk, and an enigma machine. Maybe it's because I'm watching Dr. Grime that I came up with those two thing.
This is such an awesome message! I wish everyone appreciated mathematics
My daughter loves cutting moebius strips and exploring the mandelbrot set.
You could have a room containing soap films and how they relate to minimal surfaces/differential geometry
"Oh, you swine!"
Congratulations on 200k subscribers!!
Oh. Good.
@@singingbanana Well, almost...
I remember a few cool ideas from Dara O'Brien's School of Hard Sums. For example, you have 4 points arranged in a square, say 4 towns, and you need to draw straight lines so that each town is somehow connected to each of the others, with the shorted possible total length for the paths. Maybe using bits of string or a whiteboard to try to draw the paths and measure them.
The solution turns out to be part of a hexagonal array (imagine drawing a regular hexagon with diagonal equal to the side of the square. Cut it in half, then put the halves back to back. The edges make the paths.)
Then you can explain that honeycombs are the shape they are to try and minimise the length of the cell walls.
Then this can go on to show bubbles, and how you can make cool patterns by joining bubbles together to get flat surfaces (like joining 7 together to get a cube).
The bike with square wheels on the inverted-cycloid surface would probably be pretty fun, especially if it can be made in a way that anyone can try to ride.
The floor for each room could have a different pattern, with an explanation of where it comes from. For example, one floor could have a Hilbert Curve covering the area, and another could have a Sierpinski's Carpet on it, or the Dragon curve.
A Flatland section to show the differences between dimensions. Perhaps a "periscope" of some sort that would limit the viewer's vision to a thin line, and/or one of those VR experiences that allow the user to interact with "4D" objects in 3D space.
A Monty Hall Problem gameshow booth that gathers statistics over time to show empirically that switching is better, perhaps side-by-side with a modified booth that starts with 100 doors to help show more intuitively why switching is better.
Something showing trilateration, along with an explanation of how it's used to make GPS work. Preferably something hands on instead of just a computer simulation. The interactive part could be done as some sort of treasure hunt.
A Maths Passport that they can get stamped at different stations throughout the centre. Once it's completed it they can get an inexpensive maths toy (Solids of constant width, for example) to keep.
I absolutely recommend some utilization of the game "Marble Marcher" where you transport a glass marble across the surface of a fractal to get to the objective, it is absolutely stunning in looks and I think would appeal to pretty much anyone
I know that I loved it when the Science Museum first opened the Launch Pad.
If you like that, head to Glasgow. Ours is a science centre, with almost no focus on the museum side and the main aim being interaction.
Pipe classical music through the whole space (or just in one section). Have a music section that builds up explaining the mathematics of sound. Have the culmination of that section (or the entire space) connect the maths to the music that has been playing throughout.
Beside the point that classical could possibly bore a lot of children, the theory of music, the structure of tones, and the physics of sound can all be applied to modern music as well, most notably in Jazz and ballads. A lot of popular classical music is polyphonic anyway, which is very complicated to explain in structure. (Ode to Joy is quite simple, though we wouldn’t want to get political now, would we?) The most applicable songs I can think of would be nursery rhymes, ballads, or film tunes.
If the exhibit was teaching the children about tonality, then I think playing music of all sorts in the room and limiting the engagements to simple melodies would be a more rounded experience.
@@CharlieQuartz really good points. I was just hoping to keep the kids calm. :)
What a shame--none of the millionaires that I know are friendly.
I used to love the acoustic mirror at the Ontario Science Centre. Parabola!
I'm pretty sure what you need is an animatronic Cliff Stoll.
In Germany we have "Mathematik zum Anfassen" - "Touching Math", for example, I think it's more for kids but I remember it was really fun
Love your channel.
This is such a great idea :D
I suggest visiting the palais de la decouverte in france because I went there playing with some puzzles like that when I was 8 and it made me like science ( there are math , physics , biology , chemistry and computer science departments and even being a sophomore in france in biology -geology (with math, physics and chemistry classes)(to put it simple) , I still discover plenty of things in science and even in biology. therefore I find that this museum is very good and can be an inspiration . I think it achieves to speak to children who never did science and university students in science because it has a lot of conferences that aren't like a guy speak at the front but like you play a game/make an experience and then i ask you what the best strategy is/how it works and then explain it / go farther and repeat the process with another game. plus the exhibitions now have computers with game on it ( like one where you try to build tessellations with some pieces and then it explains what different types of symmetries there are using the tesselations )
I would love some physical devices that prove maths theorems. Things like a wooden puzzle that shows proof of Pythagoras theorem. It would be interesting if you could have it that you can have kids and young teens that need to do some simple maths while looking at puzzles. There are many trigonometric identities that have beautiful visual/geometric proofs. Maybe section it after maths level. Have a corner that demonstrates concepts in calculus. Think about geometrically showing the chain rule. What about including physics? Show how inverse square laws work using circular motion.
Also, i love your work!
I love math and would definitely go to this center when I go to the UK.
In addition to the interactive portions, I think that it would also be a good idea to focus on some of the stories surrounding Mathematicians throughout history. Some of the weird stories about Pythagoras or Aristotle are more likely to stick in kid's minds than abstract maths facts, and will hopefully make the concepts more memorable and the visit to the maths center more enjoyable.
Such a great idea. I will have a look.
It surely has to involve a corner that introduces the unsolved problems in mathematics, I mean, the more people we have trying to solve it as their idea of recreation, the more data we have to work with.
And who knows, fun stuff aside someone might just come up with an ingenious perspective that leads to real breakthroughs.
Aside from that I'd very much love to see topology demonstrations. E.g. what happens when you halve a mobius loop at least 10 times.
I like that idea; unsolved mathematical problems have always been what drew me into math - especially ones with easy-to-understand parameters and long histories of not being solved (specifically, the 4-color theorem [which I know has now been proven my a 200+ case proof], angle trisection [which might have been proven algebraically somewhere], and the goldbach conjecture). There is a certain thrill in thinking -- even for just a few moments - that you have discovered something entirely new, even if you realistically know you are woefully underqualified to actually be able to make any mathematical breakthrough.
One thing that came to my mind when reading some comments about maths-music:
You could explain how music is stored electronically, for example in a mp3 file.
I couldn't think of any maths games per se, but you want to go to Techniquest for the 'wow' factor - for inspiration ;) I took my kids each time we went to S Wales to visit my family (it's in Cardiff Bay) and no matter how old they were, they absolutely loved every trip (as did we). EG my youngest - aged 2 at the time - was discovered organising a whole bunch of adults and kids in front of a camera which leaves shadows on the wall. You jump together or make shapes or whatever. It was freaking hilarious! They all did as she told them to :-D
(She now lives down the road from there. Came out of uni with a medical degree, and moved there whilst working and wondering whether to go to medical school to become a doc or not. She didn't go to uni in Cardiff [she went to Swansea and didn't want to leave] but she wanted to 'go back'. I think Cardiff won because of Techniquest LOL)
What I'm saying is that they have a fantastic balance of activities that two year-olds to grandparents plus can get involved in. They seem to know just what works. Pay a visit and maybe it'll trigger some ideas off? (Take a kid, but you don't need to. Adults love it too). Good luck!
Sounds great.
Area for fractals, ramanujan,etc; cool exotic parts of math
Yes!
Multi-state mazes are pretty fun
Suggestion: 17-clue sudoku with orthogonal symmetry
No one has been found, but it hasn't been proven it's impossible either. For now I haven't seen much people trying for it so it would be interesting.
Lots of fascinatig maths are involved (ascendent permutations, valid vs invalid patterns, etc)
The rotating diagram of pythagoras's theorem with a right angle triangle with a square attached to each of its sides, and the shape is filled with water so when you rotate it you can see that the volume of water stays the same between a^2+b^2 to c^2
Edit: fixed a typo
I've seen that in either @Bristol or the launchpad. I found it very engaging.
I love that demo. Although, after my last video I want to do it with wobbles.
At around 80-90 seconds I was like "surely there's not a solution for all possible placements - that would be INSANE"
20 seconds later... "Holy ......, SERIOUSLY? I LOVE this game already"
Well a permutation or combinations game might be perfect given time limit people just have to count
You know who I'd ask if I were you?
ViHart and 3Blue1Brown.
I'd image they'd be _fantastic_ sources of ideas.
oh yes
People really like fractals so anything with that would be cool! The math club at my university showed me the chaotic game which gives you a serpenski triangle which I thought was really cool! It did seem a little time intensive though
An interactive 3D plotter of Riemann Surfaces (with colour representing the 4th variable). It would help people visualise complex functions in a beautiful and interesting way!
Show pictures of 3D objects, and then show sculptures that are projection of 4D objects and explain the analogy.
Explain calculus by letting people zoom in on curves till they become lines.
Show the Lakes of Wada.
or let people zoom in on everywhere cts but nowhere differentiable functions!
How about a demonstration on frequency using a single string "violin" that is controlled by a magnet. The participant would turn a knob that would change the local field. It would be labeled with the Hz. This would allow them to make the connection between vibration and sound.
Another idea a solvable game. Challenge them to determine if has "winning" moves. Such as knots and crosses can end in either a win or a draw if you know what you are doing. Start it small, but have it get bigger and more complex. The biggest ones could be "homework" for those who want to solve it. This one would teach them a new (and hopefully fun) game that they can teach others and if they solved it themselves it would also make them feel smart, especially if they go for the bigger ones.
Cube sculptures that have different shadows depending on which face is illuminated.
Watching this I couldn't help thinking of Tim Rowett and the Grand Illusions youtube channel.
His interest might not be in mathematical objects (he is a toy collector), but he sure has many mathematically very interesting objects (he has for example many of those toroflux/toroids and one of those cradles)!
Here is a suggestion : apply homotopy theory to hanging paintings on the wall. More specifically, you can ask the following puzzle : " Say you have a wall with two nails and you have a rope and a painting. You want to roll the rope around the nails and then hang the painting to the extremities of the rope, so that 1- the painting holds in place 2- if I remove any nail (I get to choose), the painting and the rope fall down. Can you do that ? What if there are more nails ?". Of course in a Maths World thing, you wouldn't want to do this with a painting, but you could do it with like sort of big nails on the ground, and instead of a painting you could just ask that "if you pull the rope on both ends, it gets stuck, but if you remove any nail and then pull the rope, it gets unstuck and you get the rope back"
How about mapping a group to a rubik cube and generate music based on its various permutation patterns to generate beautiful melodies?
If you had a mezanine and something that involved queuing you could turn the string of people into functions controlled by the people on the mezanine.
Wonderful idea! You should check the cite des sciences in the palais de la découverte of paris, it's the same type of center but it is really fun, interesting, once you exit the math department, you only want to do math for the rest of your life. What really does the job for me is the presence of math conferences in order to introduce people who aren't familiar to math notions such as bayesiannism with the monty hall problem, in an interesting, fun but quite complete way (saying you do learn interessant things you will want to dig more in depth once home).
Thx for the great videos as usual and please excuse the poor english of the french student i am
Thank you. I'll check it out.
People in the UK are probably intimidated by the maths. Here in America we only have one math.
let them play around with L-systems!
E.g. provide an interface where they can look at a few examples and then play around with different starting conditions, variables and rules. I believe there is already plenty of software out there, so a lot of the work is already done.
The thumbnail is amazing
the gift shop should be stocked by Maths Gear and those toys should relate to the content.
One idea I had:
You could explain how RUclips or similar platforms store video or how video is overall stored. A perfect example for RUclips is Tom Scott’s video “Why snow and confetti ruin RUclips video quality”. This could appeal to teens visiting.
Hi James, just wanted to say that your awesome, I've never liked maths however your videos on both singing banana and numberphile have made me more interested and wanting to learn more about maths. Just wanna say thank and I hope you see this. if you do let me know
That's amazing, I'm glad! Thank you
ooh get a Foucault's pendulum and other things that show the Earth is round or spinning on it's axes, and the utilities puzzle on the mug, or different objects that look different but are topologically identical/similar :)
A triangular peg board you drop a ball or 8 down with 50/50 of dropping left or right of each peg along with the probabilities tying into pascal's triangle and a bell curve on a screen with the last 2048 results. With a display with pascal's triangle patterns.
A pythagorus' theorem geometric proof puzzle of the a+b square
Here's a project, a simple calculator that runs on running water instead of electronics so you can see the flow of input to output, failing this, an over sized circuit that lights up the pathways the electrons are flowing in to calculate something.
A mandelbrot cut out to take a picture of your face in.
An oversized chess knight with a saddle you can sit on for photos.
4 player chess.
Unsolved problems everywhere famous and trivial (if trivial exists as a concept i mean math is math right?)
Ruin naughts and crosses by solving for every possible move so you win or draw on one side of a table while your opponent plays you on the other side without this information.
interactive display where you selectively breed fractals so that you select a parent of slightly mutated offspring.
the number 722 its my favorite.
That structure of viruses video Steve mould showed
I think a demonstration of how game theory works would be really engaging for big groups of people.
Something like ncase.me/trust/ but done with groups who choose which faction they want to be in would be quite fun to play.
Martin Gardiner’s Mathematical Games Puzzles Diversions Series. Pelican Books.
modular arithmetic is relatively easy
maybe nimb which is a really mathematicall game u can make a computer play perfectly but the human can still always win
Dr. Grime reminds me of Barry Evans who played an English teacher (Mr. Brown) in Mind your Language.
KNOTS!! They’re endless fun to tangle and undo and you can do knot untangling competitions with big ropes and groups of people!
I so want those knot rings. I would totally pay for them.
ZipplyZane
Me too. Especially after he described the feeling of it “rolling” along the arm as pleasant.
Katie said they were about £10.
Put a giant frame on a wall with a Parker Square drawn on it, and write on the bottom "This is clearly not a magic square, but at least he gave it a go"
Draw a picture, then generate Tupper's self referential constant for it
Here is a suggestion with the Everything Formula: You could have some displays, were people could create small PixelArt or write their names in Pixels and then Plot it with the Everything Formula, as seen on Numberphile. Next to it could be something were they get familiarised with binary numbers, hexadecimal numbers etc. So they at least understand how their picture is converted in to the big number, wich shows the “pictures” Position in the plot. In the end they can print out their “picture” with their number.
use the Lill's method, shown today by Mathologer's video, to do something to visualize solving polynomials just with strings, would be really cool and mindblowing for everyone,
Turtle Laser Tag! :P
"you swine..." lol
You could have an event where people can come and help constroi a menger sponge
I am a big fan of promoting maths, but this sort of thing is hard to do with maths, because the enjoyment of maths doesn't come from looking at and playing with objects, like with engineering, but from understanding abstract mathematical concepts and solving problems. So my suggestion would be to have something that helps people understand a really cool concept in maths, and get them involved by appealing to people's competative nature, and having challenges to solve problems.
it's the old wolfram logo!
5:55 You could have pencil and paper available throughout the space where people could try to work things out if they felt so inclined.
4D interactive tesseract
We love you james ❤
Wish I had the opportunity to learn, missed my chance it feels like, I'm 31 and love maths but missed out big time. Would love to learn number theory the most.
Domino full-adder, with a machine that can set it up in seconds
Dave Brosius
Or a marble one would be a lot easier.
seriously how tf can you hate this guy
Who hates him?
Möbius strip climbing bars!
My conjecture is that the UK is ahead of America in Maths because we have just the one.
I like juggling so I'm going to recommend including something about siteswap en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siteswap
I hear it also can be used to describe some braids and bell ringing sequences :) and I've seen some sudoku variations with the constraint that the rows & columns have to be valid siteswaps.
What about an interactive display where people can build Platonic solids out of triangles, squares, and pentagons?
Have a computer room where you can actually see the circuitry
It could be like a general museum that focuses on the mathematical aspects of them, permanent displays like, pure maths, health and science as well as temporary things on arts and architecture/design, etc
Edit
Forgot to say Pure
I was incredibly excited for the maths exhibition at the Science Museum in London but ended up being really dissapointed. The displays were great, the room was impressive, the eclectic selection they had on offer was intriguing but it fell short for one simple reason. It was dumbed down too much! I understand that it is important not to put people off with complicated explanations, but perhaps they just needed an additional guidebook that you could pick up that would go into more detail if you wanted it? Perhaps have 3 tiers of explanation: The "puzzlers" one i.e. what the puzzle is, who invented it & any funny anecdotes about it, the "keen" one i.e. what area of maths is used to solve it and the solution, The "boffin" one i.e. why the solution works and what other problems it's broadly applicable to - generalisations of the problem etc. That way it is really up to the individual and how much they want to know!
You're not the only one.
this doesn't really answer he question - but if u lined up lasers to where the newton's cradle balls swung to and each laser was pitched to create a sound, i wonder if it would make any music/listenable sounds?
Maybe some expositions of famous mathematicians and let people play with some visual proofs they did or something?
cool channel
Hooray, another poozle!