Exploring mathematics: a powerful tool - for iPod/iPhone

How can mathematics help us to understand the world around us? The tracks on this album take us to Antarctica, Hong Kong and New Zealand to find out how mathematicians work with scientists and biologists to create mathematical models, and how collaborations like these can help decipher and predict a range of natural phenomena. We learn how the 17th Century saw the birth of one of the most important mathematical tools - calculus, and modern mathematicians examine the contribution of its three inventors - Fermat, Newton and Leibniz. This material forms part of The Open University course MS221 Exploring mathematics.

Mathematics: a powerful tool

An introduction to the tracks on this album.

07-15
00:56

Mathematical modelling for real

An introduction to mathematical modelling in the real world.

07-15
01:59

An ancient tradition

How bamboo scaffolding does its job.

07-15
05:16

How maths helps dolphins

Using statistical modelling to calculate endangered species’ survival rates.

07-15
05:02

Predicting climate change

Why elaborate mathematical modelling is needed to predict ice break-up in Antarctica.

07-15
04:37

A vibrating lake

Using mathematical modeling to understand the fluctuations in the surface levels of Lake Wakatipu.

07-15
05:20

Why is maths useful?

How the behaviour of the world around us can be understood better through mathematics.

07-15
01:06

Who invented Calculus?

The birth of calculus resulted in controversy: who got there first?

07-15
02:55

Fermat’s ideas

An explanation of some of Fermat’s discoveries.

07-15
04:02

Fermat and John Wallis

How Fermat communicated his findings to Wallis.

07-15
01:20

Isaac Newton’s input

Newton invents the binomial theorem and publishes his great work Principia Mathematica.

07-15
05:16

New insights emerge

Leibniz and the physicist Huygens work together.

07-15
07:44

The Newton-Leibniz dispute

How the birth of calculus was a truly international effort.

07-15
03:16

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