The impossible number

Design is never neutral and small choices can have a big impact. Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Katie Silver explore how consumer products marketed to women are frequently developed without fully understanding their needs. Along with expert insight, they look at everything from fo ...  Show more

CPR mannequins, medical implants and surgical tools. These are life changing and lifesaving medical devices. But when they are built around male bodies, what does that mean for everyone else?Through expert insight, Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Candice Bailey uncover how gaps in ...  Show more

There is a bizarre number in maths referred to simply as ‘i’. It appears to break the rules of arithmetic - but turns out to be utterly essential for applications across engineering and physics. We’re talking about the square root of -1. WHICH MAKES NO SENSE.Professor Fry waxes l ...  Show more

Faced with one cake and eight hungry people, it’s pretty obvious how maths underpins reality. But as mathematics gets further from common sense and into seemingly abstract territory, nature still seems to obey its rules - whether in the orbit of a planet, the number of petals ...

Is there something bigger than infinity? Does quantum mechanics affect how I think? And why can I suddenly do algebra? As ever, we’re not afraid to tackle the big questions on CrowdScience. After a previous episode about the relationship between mathematics and reality, we rec ...

Melvyn Bragg and guests John Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal and Marcus du Sautoy explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from the computer to online encryption, to alternating current and predicting the path of asteroids.In his book The Mathematician's Apolog ...  Show more