In this Core Maths research task students area asked to apply their understanding of the surface area and volume of cuboids to cells. The activity starts with an NRICH problem which explores what happens to surface area and volume of cuboids as linear dimensions change.  Students are then to investigate the surface...

In this Core Maths activity students are invited to play a game using non-transitive dice, and explore the probability behind them.

Champion of the world: Teacher guide
This teacher guidance gives an overview of the task including prior student knowledge, suggested approaches and...

The application of probability, together with combinatorics, is the focus of this A level resource, from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematical Teaching. The 2008 draw for the Champions League provides data for students to investigate the probabilities of English teams being drawn against each other and to...

This chapter in the booklet Relevant and Engaging Statistics and Data Handling from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) describes the steps needed to both take and use random samples of real data from the CensusAtSchool website. In addition it offers some ideas to allow students...

This chapter in the booklet Relevant and Engaging Statistics and Data Handling from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education (RSSCSE) presents personal experiences from Alan Catley, a teacher and ICT expert. Teaching and learning data handling and statistics makes for a far more meaningful...

From the Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving project by Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), this activity for post-16 students demonstrates that the acidity of a solution depends on the number of hydrogen ions per litre; the number of hydrogen ions per litre varies so much that a logarithmic scale is...

This Core Maths task is linked to the Baby boom task and explores standardising Normal distributions by analysing the weight of eggs.

Chicken and egg: Teacher guidance
This teacher guidance gives an overview of the task...

In this activity from the Nuffield Foundation students use the Chinese postman algorithm, also called the Route Inspection Problem, to solve practical problems. The College Open Day problem provides an introduction to the concept, and asks students to investigate the minimum distance someone would have to travel to...

Three advanced level lesson ideas from Susan Wall designed to explore the properties of circles and their equations. Each activity is accompanied by teacher notes suggesting how the activity could be delivered and possible extension ideas. The first activity requires students to match the equations of circles to...

Science and engineering represent great opportunities for magic. This book contains some amazing and easy-to-do magic tricks based on secret chemistry, physics, engineering and mathematics. The description of each trick explains the effect, how it works and hints and tips for performing the illusion. The illusions...

In this resource students are required to use moving averages to investigate evidence for trends in local temperature change. There are links to the very real political and scientific debates regarding the question of climate change.

Climate Change Overview This brief overview makes...

The Nuffield Foundation provides this activity which students use to create spreadsheets that model what would happen to the temperature of the Earth if there were to be a sudden change in the amount of radiation entering or leaving the planet. Students then investigate polynomial and exponential functions to find...

The Nuffield Foundation provides this resource which shows students how, given a set of measurements along an irregular coastline, it is possible to approximate the area of land which is lost to coastal erosion over a period of time. Coastal erosion A - this activity uses the context of coastal erosion to introduce...

From the Integrating Mathematical Problem Solving project by Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), this activity shows how compound interest can be calculated over different intervals. As the intervals get smaller and smaller, the total value approaches a limit. Topic areas covered are:
• Use of...

Mathematics plays a vital part in space flight, it gives us a way both to predict what should happen in the future and also ways to measure what’s actually happening in the present, and adapt to it. In this resource we look at a few places where maths helps in space flight. The maths is made simple here (it’s far,...