Act 1

A video shows a jar of toothpicks being emptied....

The Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching provide these resources, developed to emphasise the practical nature of mathematics and its application to real life situations.

Athletics Track - explores the mathematics required in the design of an athletics track.

World...

In this puzzle students are asked to identify all of the states in a topological map of the United States of America. The resource contains a few hints to help orientate the map, but students will have to be familiar with the original map to complete the task.

The map was produced by Sian Zelbo and Mark Saul...

This collection contains resources from the website 1001mathproblems.com by Sian Zelbo. The focus is on ‘topology’ presented in the form of puzzles. 

This SMILE resource contains one pack of games, investigations, worksheets and practical activities supporting the teaching and learning of topology.

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This module from the Nuffield Foundation introduces simple ideas of topology starting from informal considerations of topological transformations progressing to work on networks (the bulk of the content) and ending with an investigation into map colouring.

Torbury Festival is a set of interactive lessons around staging of a music festival. To overcome various challenges, from floods to escaped cattle to over-excited crowds storming the stage, students must apply their mathematical knowledge to real life situations. The problems are intended to promote discussion,...

This resource from stats4schools focuses on which attractions in London are the most popular using data from the National Tourist Board covering the years 1994 to 2001. Students can interpret information from tables, manipulate data, investigate tourism and plan a visit to London.

The resource includes a...

This study, from the Nuffield Foundation, is a follow-up to the report 'Is the UK an outlier?', which examined mathematics education provision in 24 different countries and revealed that England, Wales and Northern Ireland have the lowest levels of participation in upper secondary mathematics. They were the only...

This mathematical investigation from the National Strategies Study Plus collection starts with the idea of someone being locked up in a tower.

The context could to be adapted so that it will appeal to the students, for example built around spies, knights of old, or TV characters. The tower shape and number...

In this resource the time is given for a train to pass a signal. The time is also given for a train to completely pass through a tunnel. It is assumed that the train is travelling at constant speed. The task is to calculate the length of the train.

Solving the problem requires the use of the formula for...

In this interactive golf game from Subtangent the player has to get the ball in the hole by choosing the most effective geometric transformations to beat the target score for each hole.

There are two versions of the...

This interactive excel program allows students to explore the relationship between the transformation of functions and the associated graphs. Functions explored are straight lines, quadratic and cubic functions as well as sine and cosine curves. Each type of function...

This interactive excel program allows students to explore the relationship between the transformation of functions and the associated graphs. Functions explored are straight lines, quadratic and cubic functions as well as sine and cosine curves. Each type of function...