News

Relatively Prime: stories from the mathematical domain
Did you know slime mould can recreate the Tokyo subway network? Or the special connection between crickets and Kevin Bacon? Samuel Hansen does and he wants to tell you all the weird and unexpected stories from the mathematical world... but he needs your help.
UK wins two gold at the International Maths Olympiad
The UK has won two gold, one silver and two bronze medals at this year's International Mathematical Olympiad! and 1 Honourable Mention. The team came 17th out of 101 participating countries, and also received one honourable mention. It has been fifteen years since the UK team was last awarded two gold medals.
What is time?
In our Science fiction, science fact project you told us that you'd like to know what time is. So we've gone and talked to an expert — Paul Davies — and we'll publish his response shortly. Meanwhile, we're opening our poll for the second round, to see which question you'd like to have answered next. So get voting!
Maths at the British Science Festival

Mathematics is the language of the sciences, and the 2011 British Science Festival will be speaking volumes about how exciting maths can be. From events exploring the impact of maths on ground breaking scientific ideas to the role of statistics in professional sports, there's enough to bring out the mathlete in everyone.
Earn your school a London 2012 reward!
Has your school been using our sister site Maths and Sport: Countdown to the Games as a learning resource? If yes, your commitment could earn you a reward from London 2012.
The unplanned impact of maths
What's a particular piece of mathematics good for? It can take decades, or even centuries for an answer to this question to materialise. In today's climate, in which scientific research is increasingly judged according to its impact, this can pose a problem for pure mathematics. Now a collection of examples of mathematical ideas that have found applications long after their discovery has been published in the journal Nature.
Maths in a minute: The prisoner's dilemma
Sometimes people are nasty when it would have been better to be nice.
John Barrow wins IMA-LMS Christopher Zeeman Medal!
Professor John Barrow, director of the Millennium Mathematics Project (the home of Plus), wins the IMA-LMS Christopher Zeeman Medal for his work promoting mathematics to the public.
The Maths Inside the 2011 Summer Science Exhibition
multicoloured eye

Plus has teamed up with the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2011 to reveal the maths behind some of the science on show. We have chosen two exhibits from this year's participants and produced postcards for people to pick up at the stand, accopmanied by Plus articles to reveal some of the the maths behind them. Read the articles and if you can't make it to the exhibition yourself, you can also download pdfs of the postcards.
Face to face
icon
How would it feel to look in a mirror and see not your own reflection but instead how you would look as the opposite sex? You can explore this strange alternate reality at this year's Royal Society Summer Exhibition where scientists from Queen Mary, University of London and University College London will use mathematical wizardry to produce gender reversed images of faces.
Can triangles help spot a bomb?
Airport security staff have a daunting task. With impatient queues looming over them they need to search x-ray scans of cluttered suitcases for several items at once: knives, guns and bombs. How can we ease their task and make sure they don't miss a crucial item? To find out, scientists are trying to understand how we humans take in visual information. The humble triangle plays a crucial role in the experiments they perform.
How hard is the Rubik's cube?
A Rubik's cube, you'll be pleased to hear, can always be solved in at most 20 moves, no matter how badly it was scrambled up to start with. Mathematicians have proved that that's true. But what if you're wrestling with a larger cube that has more than three little cubes in a row?