Articles
Table tennis first became an Olympic sport in 1988, but changed its scoring system in 2001 to make matches more exciting for spectators. But how does the new system compare to the old one in terms of your chances of winning? |
Journey to distant islands to discover if topology can overcome topography and bring peace to rival towns. |
In the 1930s the logician Kurt Gödel showed that if you set out proper rules for mathematics, you lose the ability to decide whether certain statements are true or false. This is rather shocking and you may wonder why Gödel's result hasn't wiped out mathematics once and for all. The answer is that, initially at least, the unprovable statements logicians came up with were quite contrived. But are they about to enter mainstream mathematics? |
One of the most surprising things about mathematics is its many unsolved mysteries. Mathematics is far from "done and dusted", and Steve Humble shows us how we can come up with some mathematical mysteries of our own. |
Many things make a noise when you hit them, but not many are commonly used to play music — why is that? Jim Woodhouse looks at harmonic and not so harmonic frequencies and at how percussion instruments are tuned.
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Many people like mathematics because it gives definite answers. Things are either true or false, and true things seem true in a very fundamental way. But it's not quite like that. You can actually build different versions of maths in which statements are true or false depending on your preference. So is maths just a game in which we choose the rules to suit our purpose? Or is there a "correct" set of rules to use? We find out with the mathematician Hugh Woodin. |
