Maths for Kids / Maths is Not Boring: The Kids Maths Podcast

Have you ever heard of a math puzzle that acts like a wild weather storm? In 1937, a mathematician named Lothar Collatz invented a simple number machine with just two rules: if a number is even, cut it in half. If it is odd, multiply it by three and add one! Sounds easy, right? But what happens next is pure magic! Instead of acting normally, the numbers bounce wildly up and down like hailstones caught in a massive storm cloud! Some climb up into the thousands, while others drop low, but eventually, every single number gets trapped in the exact same endless loop: 4-2-1! Scientists have used massive supercomputers to check over 295 quintillion numbers, and they all get sucked into this strange mathematical whirlpool. But here is the ultimate mystery: nobody in the world has ever been able to prove why it works or if a giant number exists out there in infinity that can finally escape! Join Mira and Finn as they explore the mind-bending Collatz Conjecture, the ultimate unsolved puzzle hiding right behind simple math!

Have you ever tried to walk across a room, but realized you have to go halfway first? And then half of that remaining distance? And half of that? Welcome to one of the most mind-bending puzzles in history! Over 2,500 years ago, an ancient Greek thinker named Zeno of Elea came up with a massive brain-teaser called Zeno's paradox. He imagined a race between the world's fastest hero, Achilles, and a slow, creeping tortoise. Because Achilles is so fast, he gives the tortoise a big head start. But every time Achilles reaches the spot where the tortoise just was, the tortoise has moved a tiny bit forward! If this keeps happening forever and ever in smaller and smaller gaps, how does Achilles ever catch up? Join Mira and Finn on Maths is Not Boring as they unravel this ancient mystery! You'll discover how clever mathematicians finally solved this endless puzzle using the magic of limits. Get ready to realize that every time you walk to the kitchen for a snack, you are literally conquering infinity!

Have you ever wondered who invented times tables? Or why three times four is exactly the same as four times three? It's time to discover the quiet magic of multiplication! Imagine lining up your favorite wrapped sweets on a table in three rows of four. Now, walk around to the side of the table. Suddenly, it looks like four rows of three, but you haven't moved a single sweet! Mathematicians call this amazing swapping trick "commutativity," and it perfectly hides in plain sight in chocolate bars, egg cartons, and even the folding seats in a cinema!

But how long have humans known this math secret? Grab your time machine because we are traveling all the way back to ancient China around 305 BCE! You won't find paper books here. Instead, ancient scholars wrote their math on delicate bamboo strips! In the 2010s, historians pieced together 21 muddy, waterlogged bamboo strips found in an ancient tomb to discover the oldest decimal times table in the entire world!

Join Mira and Finn as they solve a 2,000-year-old puzzle, explore why this magic trick doesn't work for subtraction, and reveal the hidden math shapes in your kitchen!

The story of the Platonic solids for kids: the five perfect shapes studied by Theaetetus and Plato in ancient Athens, and how Euclid proved around 300 BCE there can never be a sixth.
• What makes a solid perfect: the same faces and the same corners
• Why only five shapes work, worked out with triangles, squares and pentagons at a corner
• Why each one makes a fair die, and where they turn up in salt crystals and viruses
• Quiz questions to answer along the way
Maths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.

The story of averages for kids: how around 1950 Gilbert Daniels measured 4,063 United States Air Force pilots and found that not one was average in every way.
• Why cockpits built for the average pilot fitted nobody
• What an average tells you about a crowd, and what it cannot tell you
• How the answer was seats and pedals that adjust, like the seats in a car
• Quiz questions to answer along the way
Maths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.