Maths in a minute
How to make a hard problem easy by changing the way you look at it.
What happens when you shrink infinity to a point? You get a sphere!
Number theory is famous for problems that everyone can understand and that are easy to express, but that are fiendishly difficult to prove. Here are some of our favourites.
Did you learn at school that the angles in a triangle always add up to 180 degrees? If yes then your teacher was wrong. Find out why here.
Is there a perfect voting system? In the 1950s the economist Kenneth Arrow asked himself this question and found that the answer is no, at least in the setting he imagined.
Here's a well-known conundrum: suppose I need to buy a book from a shop that costs £7. I haven't got any money, so I borrow £5 from my brother and £5 from my sister. I buy the book and get £3 change. I give £1 back to each my brother and sister and I keep the remaining £1. I now owe each of them £4 and I have £1, giving £9 in total. But I borrowed £10. Where's the missing pound?
We've been dabbling a lot in the mysterious world of quantum physics lately, so to get back down to Earth we thought we'd bring you reminder of good old classical physics.