Maths and Physics Group
Equation of the Month: Elliptic curve. This seemingly simple equation describes a curve with remarkable properties and applications. This type of curve has applications in number theory including Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, cryptography and integer factorization. It also has a price tag: a deep understanding of related functions could win you $1M if you can prove the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.
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Sept 11
Video: Prof Chris Clarkson - Dark energy, black holes, Big Bang Oct 9
Phil Stacey: Tesla (the man, not the company) A biography Nov 13
Paul Masham: Quaternions You have probably heard of real and complex numbers, but what about quaternions? The schedule may change, so please check again closer to the date
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The Maths and Physics Group meets on the 2nd Wednesday of the month in the Lower Classroom at the Holy Trinity Parish Centre from 9.30 am until 10.45 am. Most meetings consist of one of our members giving a talk on a subject of their choice, but we are open to suggestions. There is also a WhatsApp group for people to ask each other questions, or to point out interesting news articles or books they've read.
New members are very welcome. You don't need to be Einstein be a member! You just need to be interested in maths or physics (or engineering, technology, astronomy ... ). Contact [email protected] for further information.
Previous Talks
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Making a telescope that can't see stars
Playing with a Stirling engine Why do so many physicists go into financial services? Bell's Inequalities and Aspect's entanglement experiment Heat and Thermodynamics Video: Geometry of Chaos Sphere-packing in n-dimensions Experiment: Determining the wavelength of a laser Polynomials and (Aero) Planes Radio Telescopes "Welcome to the Loxodrome" (!) The Wonderful World of Non-dimensional Groups Covert Radar Detection of Stealth Planes The Steam Engine The Concept of a Field Audio Compression and MP3 Lightning ! |
Galileo
Trisecting the Angle lockchain, BitCoin & NFTs Three talks on books:
Bat Sonar – An Engineering Perspective Genetic Algorithms Do the Angles of a Triangle Add Up to Two Right Angles The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics Measuring the Earth Zipf’s Law and Benford's Law Short Introduction to Dirac and a Physics Experiment Summing Some Series and Quantum Physics |
Lastly, a bit of fun ...
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Easier
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Harder
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Please make all the usual assumptions, and don't worry if you can't solve the problems! Solutions can be found in this pdf.
The questions are best viewed on a desktop as they may contain pictures that cannot be scaled easily for a mobile.
Two new problems will appear next month.
The questions are best viewed on a desktop as they may contain pictures that cannot be scaled easily for a mobile.
Two new problems will appear next month.
Page maintained by Dave Waymont