Kids who love maths

And I'm finally back with the answer to that series of sum's in my latest post. To remind you the challenge was . How do you create the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 & 10 only using the following digits 4, 4, 4, 4, +, -, /, x So how did you go? I managed to do from 1-9 but stubbled with 10. Can you do 10? Here they are: 1=4/4x4/4 2=4/4+4/4 3=4-4/4 4=4/4x4 5=4/4+4 6=4+4/4+4 7=4+4-4/4 8=4+4 9=4+4+4/4

Do you think that adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying by 4 is easy? If you do then keep reading, and if not then just keep reading for the fun of solving a problem that has taken me ages to figure out. Here it is: Using only four 4's, addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, try and make all the figures (numbers) from 1-9 and this time I'm not going to give you any help. I'll post the answers soon.

If your listening to music every morning on the the way to school or work then this may change your mind. If your wondering what I'm talking about it is the sleek geeks podcast. This is a podcast where Dr. Karl and Adam Spencer ask questions about maths and physics and then answer them. They have some fascinating topics including, why one is not a prime number (see my latest post for more details), the number 12, and all about the soccer world cup including advanced mathematical formulars, how the ball works, the history of the game and curving the ball like David Beckham. They are also a bit crazy and here is one of Adam's quotes from his Ted Talk (my second blog post) "In a room full of average people I'm a maths genius, but in a room full of phd mathematicians I'm as dumb as a box of hammers". He's very funny and super smart. You can download it on the podcasts app on your I-phone. the pod cast is called "sleek geeks".

This post investigates the mysterious question, why 1 is not a prime number. Let's quickly define what a prime number is (I have talked about primes before in an my older post called "Prime Numbers", which will tell you all about what a prime number is, and a cool video of Adam Spencer talking about "monster primes"). Alot of people think that number 1 is a prime number because the basic prime number rule is that the number can only be divided by itself and 1 (there are no other possible factors).  In this case, 1 divided by itself = 1, but that is actually the exact reason it is not prime.   In fact, even my sister's maths teacher was telling her class recently that 1 should be considered prime. So why is 1 not prime?  Because, as explained by my favourite mathematician Adam Spencer on the 26 June 2014  Sleek Geeks podcast The Number One, Big Data and Twittertime (you can find it on iTunes - just search up "Sleek Geeks" in Podcasts) no ...

Yep I'm back with the answers to the quiz in my post 'Think of it differently'. 1. you are running in a race and you overtake the person in second place. What place are you coming now? The answer is 2nd place. 2.a man buys sacks of rice for $1.00 a kg from american farmers and then sells them for $0.05 a kg in India. As a result of this he became a millionaire. How come? The answer is that he started off as a billionaire and made a loss. 3.There was a man who never left his house. The only visitor he got was someone delivering supplies every two weeks. One dark stormy night he lost control of his senses, turned off the lights and went to sleep. The next morning it is discovered that his actions resulted in the deaths of seven people. Why? The answer is that the man lived in a light house. 4. How can you stick ten pins into a balloon without it popping? The answer is that the balloon is not blown up.

Maths is not just maths, maths is life. We use it all the time without knowing it. Mathematics is everywhere like at the shops, in the park, on buildings but most importantly in your mind. Okay what have we learnt so far, we've found out that maths is everywhere in everyday life, that thinking outside the box is very important if you want to be great at maths but now it's time for A small quiz 1.You are running in a race and you overtake the person who's coming second, what position are you in now? 2.A man buys sacks of rice for one dollar a kg from American farmers and then sells them $0.05 a kg in India. As a result of this he became a millionaire. How come? 3.There was a man who never left his house. The only visitor he got was someone delivering supplies every two weeks. One dark stormy night he lost control of his senses, turned off the lights and went to sleep. The next morning it is discovered that his actions resulted in the deaths of seven people. Why? 4...

Meccano is a model construction system created in the UK by Frank Hornby. It consists of re-usable metal strips, plates,angle girders, wheels, axles and gears with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. It enables the building of working models and mechanical devices. To find find out more about what Meccano is: Click Here   If you want to find out about all the different sets: Click Here If you want to buy one of those Meccano sets you'll have to think about these things. Are you very creative? Are you willing to work hard to complete one of these hard challenges? I go pretty well with it(I think one of the reasons why I do is because my answer to both those questions is yes). So far I have built a complicated crane powered by a pulley and now I am starting to build a helicopter powered by both a motor and a pulley. When your building a model you may notice that there could be a few mistakes in the instructions so you might need to improvise a solution if you ge...

I came up with the idea of this new post when I started building an amazing elevator mechanism with my friend Alec. We made it because we were actually trying to build a bridge that was at least 10cm high and 20cm long but there weren’t enough bricks to use because there were 22 other people in pairs trying to achieve the exact same results, that’s when we came up with our new invention. Today I will teach you a basic way to make one gear go faster then the other just by the turn of a handle. Gears are basically wheels with these bumps on them which we call teeth. The bigger the gear the more teeth it has. To make the gears go faster first you need to have two gears, with one bigger then the other. Add a handle to the axle connected to the bigger gear and the add a handle to the other axle, then turn the handle connected to the bigger gear and you will see that the handle you are not turning will go faster then the one you are turning. Warning! Make sure that the tee...

This post is all about the 5 smallest particle that the world knows of. They are atoms,electrons, protons, neutrons and quarks. Atoms are made out of a nucleus and electrons, the nucleus is made out of protons and neutrons, the protons, neutrons and electrons are made out of even smaller particles called quarks. An atom works like this, the nucleus is like the boss, bigger and stronger than his workers and centred right in the centre, and then there are the electrons who are like the workers whizzing around all day doing their work. This is a image of an atom that might explain a bit more: here you can find a whole lot more information on atoms

The triangle is the strongest shape, this is because if there is any pressure on top or beneath it the triangle will only bend in the section where there is the most pressure. With most other shapes - such as a circle or square - the top would just bend and then collapse on top of the rest of the structure. But at the same time triangles are not the stiffest shape but is actually pretty flexible compared to quite a lot of other shapes, which makes it one of the most important shapes for structures like bridges. You can try making a bridge out of straws and then see how strong it is!  Here are some bridges with triangles.                                                                                                   ...

Not to long ago I went on this course where I learnt to code my own apps using a device on the mac called XCODE. CodeCamp helped me out a lot during the hard parts and taught me how to turn a small bit of computer programming into a fully functional app that you can release out to the world. All the apps that get created at CodeCamp do not go to the app store but instead they go to a different place called Hockey App. click here to see XCODE. click here to find out more about CodeCamp. It's great fun for kids who love maths!

Something that encouraged me to work harder to improve my maths and programming skills is a website called Codecademy which is a course which teaches you to program in lots of different computer languages to take you step by step through the basics of programming and even creating your own website! I started off on HTML and CSS and I am still only half way through which reminds me that I will need a lot of patience and you should to. http://www.codecademy.com/learn click above to get started!

One of my favourite numbers is between 3.2 and 3.1 called pi. I know a lot about it so lets get straight in to the information. The formulae of pi is ' r squared x pi=c' because r means the radius of a circle and c means the circumference of a circle so the radius of the circle times pi=the circumference of a circle. The first fifty digits of pi are '3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510  I have already memorised the first 20 digits of pi. Here is the first page of the book 'The Secrets Of Pi' The Secrets Of Pi Chapter 1 Everything you always wanted to know about pi  but were afraid to ask p is the most famous number in the world, the most studied, the most calculated, the most referenced…But nevertheless there is little definite that can be said about p . To begin its decimals start in this way: 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 and with those fifty magical digits one can navigate aroun...

Not too long ago I found out about a maths problem called "The 7 Bridges of Konigsberg". Here's the problem, The people of Konigsberg want to try and go across all 7 bridges only once. See if you can cross all 7 bridges without crossing any more than once. Now try taking one bridge away like this: Visit the link to see all the detail. its fun to try different bridges to see if you can complete the challenge.  http://mathforum.org/isaac/problems/bridges1.html

I love the powers of 2 because I found out that they are used in 2 of my favourite things:binary and prime numbers. Here are the powers of 2 up to 83. 0 1 1 2 2 4 3 8 4 16 5 32 6 64 7 128 8 256 9 512 10 1,024 11 2,048 12 4,096 13 8,192 14 16,384 15 32,768 16 65,536 17 131,072 18 262,144 19 524,288 20 1,048,576 21 2,097,152 22 4,194,304 23 8,388,608 24 16,777,216 25 33,554,432 26 67,108,864 27 134,217,728 28 268,435,456 29 536,870,912 30 1,073,741,824 31 2,147,483,648 32 4,294,967,296 33 8,589,934,592 34 17,179,869,184 35 34,359,738,368 36 68,719,476,736 37 137,438,953,472 38 274,877,906,944 39 549,755,813,888 40 1,099,511,627,776 41 2,199,023,255,552 42 4,398,046,511,104 43 8,796,093,022,208 44 17,592,186,044,416 45 35,184,372,088,832 46 70,368,744,177,664 47 140,737,488,355,328 48 281,474,976,710,656 49 562,949,953,421,312 50 1,125,899,906,842,624 51 2,251,799,813,685,248 52 4,503,599,627,370,496 53 9,007,199,254,740,992 54 18,0...

Another thing I love about maths are the powers of  3. I like it because it's very challenging and helps your calculating improve. here are some of the powers of 3: Powers of three: 2 9 3 27 4 81 5 243 6 729 7 2187 8 6561 9 19683 10 59049 11 177147 12 531441 13 1594323 14 4782969 15 14348907 16 43046721 17 129140163 18 ...

One of the first things I started loving about maths were prime numbers. A prime number is a number that can only be divided by itself and one. In other words it can not be broken down into any smaller whole numbers, which in this case are called factors. These are a few special facts about a prime number: There are infinite prime numbers 2 to the power of a prime number-1=another larger prime number One of the of the main things that you will need to know about that second fact is that you can not use any prime number to do that some. That's because 2 to the power of 11-1=2,047=23x89 which means it is not prime, but these are all prime numbers: 2 to the power of 13=8,191 2 to the power of 17=131,071 2 to the power of 19=524,087 Which are all prime numbers! I started loving prime numbers when I watched this ted talk about the search for monster primes. I liked this video because it reminds me how if you stay focus on one thing you can achieve anything. This video is p...

Hi everyone. I have created my new blog because I want to inspire kids who are gifted or talented with mathematics and feel confident for a challenge and want to take it a step further. You can have fun learning a few little bits and pieces of the whole wide world of mathematics. You can find out about new websites that might interest you and and make you work harder. Here is something that really inspired me about maths and to start working harder. click here