Article

Breaking symmetry

Physicists love symmetry, but they get even more excited about symmetry breaking. They even believe that many of the features of the world we live in are a result of it. What do they mean by that?
Article

Circles rolling on circles

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 surprise!
Article
Billiards

Chaos on the billiard table

If you thought that billiards was a harmless game to play in the pub, think again. It's a breeding ground for chaos!

Article

Pointless: The maths of TV gameshows

One thing that makes TV game shows fun to watch is that there's usually an element of luck involved. But how (un)lucky is (un)lucky? We look at the probabilities of two popular examples.
Article
Arrows around a yellow tube

Why did nature choose quantum theory?

To create energy from information you would need to break the second law of thermodynamics — that's impossible in the real world, but could theories that do break it shed light on why nature is the way it is?

News story

A NICE decision

How does NICE make the difficult decision of which treatments to fund under the NHS?
News story

Easy as 1, 2, 3?

The natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., are nice. So what could be nicer than discovering interesting patterns within them?
News story

Building a bridge to maths

At last month's Cambridge Science Festival we had great fun trying out a hands-on (or rather feet-on) activity based on one of our favourite puzzles – the bridges of Königsberg. We were really pleased with how it went, so we thought we'd share our game for others to put on at their own science or maths event.