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Seven things everyone wants to know about the universe
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What would you like to know about your universe?

Careers with maths
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The visual effects in Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd

A favourite from the archive...
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...about what makes life interesting and why old-fashioned maths is what you need for physics.

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June 2009
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projection

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We've all seen a traditional sundial, where a triangular wedge is used to cast a shadow onto a marked-out dial - but did you know that there is another kind? In this article, Chris Sangwin and Chris Budd tell us about a different kind of sundial, the analemmatic design, where you can use your own shadow to tell the time.

Tags: trigonometry : projection : declination of the sun : angular distance : ellipse : sundial


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A question which has been vexing astronomers for a long time is whether the forces of attraction between stars and galaxies will eventually result in the universe collapsing back into a single point, or whether it will expand forever with the distances between stars and galaxies growing ever larger. Toby O'Neil describes how the mathematical theory of dimension gives us a way of approaching the question.

Tags: projection : fractal : dimension : scaling : box dimension : Cantor dust


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Mathematics is helping the blind move forward and us all to step inside the past.

Tags: projection : mathematics and art