Articles

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    Light's identity crisis

    What is light? Sometimes it seems wave-like and sometimes particle like. See how Einstein applied his theory of relativity to the problem, predicted that photons have no mass and laid the foundations for quantum mechanics.
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    Quantum uncertainty

    Quantum mechanics is the physics of the extremely small. With something so far outside our everyday experience it's not surprising to find mathematics at the heart of it all. But at the quantum scale nothing in life is certain... Peter Landshoff explains.
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    Image analysis - a modern application of mathematics

    New technology has provided us with some amazing images - satellite images, medical images, even images beamed back from Mars. Julian Stander tells us about the increasing role of statistics in interpreting them.
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    Designing loudspeakers

    In his second article, David Henwood explains the role of mathematics in the design of Hi-Fi loudspeakers.
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    Natural frequencies and music

    In the first of two articles, David Henwood discusses the vibrations that can be harnessed by musical instrument makers.
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    What a coincidence!

    Coincidences are familiar to us all but what are the so-called laws of chance? From coin tossing to freak weather events, Geoffrey Grimmett explains how probability is at the heart of it all.
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    Mathematical mysteries: Kepler's conjecture

    Sir Walter Raleigh is perhaps best known for laying down his cloak in the mud for Queen Elizabeth I. But, he also started a mathematical quest which to this day remains unsolved.

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    Dynamic programming: an introduction

    The previous feature, "Mathematics, marriage and finding somewhere to eat" investigated the problem of finding the best potential partner from a fixed number of potential partners using a technique known as "optimal stopping". Inevitably, mathematicians and mathematical psychologists have constructed other models of the problem...
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    Decoding a war time diary

    An account of how a prisoner of war's diary was recently decoded. Donald Hill wrote his diary in a numerical code, disguised as a set of mathematical tables, while in Hong Kong during and after the Japanese invasion of 1941.