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Maths Inspiration
On Thursday 1 December Mrs Ford and Mrs Gallagher accompanied the A level Further Mathematics students to the Maths Inspirations talk in Reading. The speakers were both informative and entertaining. The afternoon began with Paul Shepherd, a designer and engineer who worked on both the Emirates Stadium and the new London Olympics Stadium. His talk on resonance resulted in a Jenga tower collapsing under loud applause!. Rob Eastaway then challenged us with Maths on the back of an envelope which largely consists of doing calculations with no real data. We met the ‘zequals’ sign, Eastaway’s way of guesstimating. Our challenges including an estimate of a local MacDonalds revenue in a week.
Finally the Australian mathematician, Colin Wright, gave us an unrivalled display of juggling whilst describing how the movement could be displayed using new notation. All the speakers brought mathematics to life and their extensive experience of using mathematics in areas as varied as structural design, juggling and radar made them compelling speakers. The students were thoroughly entertained and enlightened.
