On Pi day (14 March) the Lower Sixth A Level Mathematicians went to the The Hexagon Theatre in Reading for an event called ‘Maths Inspiration’.

The event consisted of three very different talks from Mathematicians who use Maths outside of a taught curriculum. Ayliean Macdonald’s talk about using repeating patterns to create beautiful fractal art was very thought provoking; one of the patterns she described followed a simple rule, and yet Mathematicians have not found out how many additional lines are needed to be added at a general level of the pattern.

The second speaker, Tom Crawford, a Professor of Mathematics and the University of Oxford, actively works with modelling ocean flows to assist with ocean clean up. Did you know there is a garbage patch in the Pacific ocean that is three times the area of France? Tom spoke about the Navier Stokes equations, and how he uses them to find where river pollution goes after the river mouth.

Finally, Ben Sparks spoke about the Mathematics of music, specifically Sine waves. What notes work together and why? How did we arrive at a pentatonic scale? A dodecagonic scale? Why is an octave an octave? Ben also spoke about how the music scales we use are not perfect, but rather have been made close to perfect by approximating Pythagorean frequencies.

Overall, the event was appropriately pitched at the students, well varied, and has received lots of positive feedback from staff and students alike. Ariana, one of the students on the trip, said that the event was ‘profoundly inspiring, exposing the transformative role of maths in real-world applications‘. She went on to say that the trip was a ‘truly delightful experience and effectively highlighted how the revolutionary advancements that shape our everyday lives will always link back to maths’.