Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
Space science is one of HM Government’s ‘eight great technologies’. In this lecture I will explain the mathematics behind satellites, showing how they are controlled, how they are sent to distant planets and how they transmit and receive data over vast distances.
Constable's Stour landscapes of the Regency period, during and just after the War with France, and his publication English Landscape Scenery, champion local and low-key rural England.
Many of us have been in a medical scanner and benefited from its use in medical diagnostics. But how many of us have considered how it works? The maths behind modern medical imaging (showing how CAT, MRI and Ultrasound scanners work) will be explained.
M.C. Escher’s work often used ingenious tilings of the plane with interlocking figures. We'll look at the mathematics of this diagram and how Escher used it. We’ll also see how Coxeter produced mathematical research based on aspects of Escher's work.
The mystery of an image of a levitating mathematician that won a first prize in a photo science competition in 2013 will be explained to show that such principles can be used beyond special effects.
Mathematics is vital in ensuring that the lights stay on as the planners of the grid need to solve non-linear differential-algebraic equations to work out how much electricity can be generated, distributed and stored. These challenges will increase in the future.
Frost's line, 'I found a dimpled spider... holding up a moth like a white piece of rigid satin cloth' exploits simile... But how can a moth be like cloth? -This is one of a number of examples that will be explored with a view to refining our understanding of smilie.