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geometry
This week would have been the 100th birthday of Martin Gardner, who is deservedly credited with turning on several generations of people worldwide to the pleasures of maths! To mark the occasion here are some favourite puzzles that, apart from being fun, also lead to some serious maths.
The Mayan civilisation brought forth many great things — including this clever way of making a right angle.
Maryam Mirzakhani is being honoured for her "rare combination of superb technical ability, bold ambition, far-reaching vision, and deep curiosity".
Free kicks will deliver much of the drama in the football world cup this summer. But how should strikers approach them and how does the design on the ball impact on its behaviour in flight? Maths can give us answers...
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!
Like spirals and flowers? Then you'll love polar coordinates and the pretty pictures they allow you to draw!
Saul Schleimer and Henry Segerman show off some of their beautiful 3D printed mathematical structures.
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.
The Plus team's vehicle of choice is the bicycle, so we're particularly pleased about an announcement that hit the news this month: a clever car mirror that eliminates the dreaded blind spot has been given a patent in the US. The mirror was designed by the mathematician Andrew Hicks, of Drexel University, after years of puzzling over the problem.