Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 28, 2022

The World's Most Beautiful Equations

Introduction Equations aren't just useful' they're often beautiful. (Image credit: Shutterstock/Fedorov Oleksiy)Mathematical equations aren't just useful — many are quite beautiful. And many scientists admit they are often fond of particular formulas not just for their function, but for their form, and the simple, poetic truths they contain. While certain...

Jul 28, 2022

9 equations that changed the world

Mathematical equations offer unique windows into the world. They make sense of reality and help us see things that haven't been previously noticed. So it’s no surprise that new developments in math have often gone hand in hand with advancements in our understanding of the universe. Here, we take a...

Sep 22, 2022

Babylonians used Pythagorean theorem 1,000 years before it was 'invented' in ancient Greece

A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has revealed that the ancient Babylonians understood the Pythagorean theorem more than 1,000 years before the birth of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who is widely associated with the idea. The tablet, known as Si.427, was used by ancient land surveyors to draw accurate boundaries and is...

Mar 13, 2023

12 numbers that are cooler than pi

Here at Live Science, we love numbers. And on Pi Day — March 14, or 3/14 — we love to celebrate the world's most famous irrational number, pi, whose first 10 digits are 3.141592653. As the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, pi is not just irrational, meaning...

Mar 28, 2023

Mathematicians make rare breakthrough on notoriously tricky 'Ramsey number' problem

Mathematicians have made a breakthrough in one of the thorniest math problems out there — only the third major step forward in 75 years. The problem involves Ramsey numbers, a deceptively simple concept that is quite slippery, mathematically. A Ramsey number is the minimum size of a group needed to...

Mar 31, 2023

High school students may have just discovered an 'impossible' proof to the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem

Two high school students say they’ve proved the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry — a feat mathematicians thought was impossible. While the proof still needs to be scrutinized by mathematicians, it would constitute an impressive finding if true. Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson, who are seniors at St. Mary's Academy in...

Mar 31, 2023

Newly discovered 'einstein' tile is a 13-sided shape that solves a decades-old math problem

Look carefully! Mathematicians have invented a new 13-sided shape that can be tiled infinitely without ever repeating a pattern. They call it the einstein. For decades, mathematicians wondered if it was possible to find a single special shape that could perfectly tile a surface, without leaving any gaps or causing...

Jun 6, 2023

Mathematicians end decades-long quest to find elusive 'vampire einstein' shape

What has 14 sides, is full of curves, and can perfectly cover a surface with no gaps or overlaps? It's not a riddle — it's a vampire einstein. In March, a retired printing technician named David Smith stumbled upon a remarkable discovery in the world of mathematics. He found a...

Jun 15, 2023

A 79-year-old mathematician may have just solved an infinite dimension puzzle that's vexed theorists for decades

Two weeks ago, a modest-looking paper was uploaded to the arXiv preprint server with the unassuming title On the invariant subspace problem in Hilbert spaces. The paper is just 13 pages long and its list of references contains only a single entry. The paper purports to contain the final piece...

Jul 11, 2023

Mathematicians finally identify 'seemingly impossible' number after 32 years, thanks to supercomputers

Mathematicians armed with supercomputers have finally identified the value of a hefty number that was previously thought to be impossible to calculate. The number, known as the ninth Dedekind number or D(9), is actually the 10th in a sequence. Each Dedekind number represents the number of possible configurations of a...

Aug 11, 2023

Scientists uncover hidden math that governs genetic mutations

Scientists have discovered that a key function from a pure branch of mathematics can predict how often genetic mutations lead to changes in function. These rules, laid out by the so-called sum-of-digits function, also govern some aspects of protein folding, computer coding and certain magnetic states in physics. Part of...

Nov 17, 2023

The 9 most massive numbers in existence

Big numbers are everywhere, from the cells in the human body to the size of the universe. But once numbers edge past the realm of the physical, the human mind can struggle to grasp the sheer awesome scale of these numbers. Even infinity can seem easier to understand in comparison...

Nov 20, 2023

How long is a second?

There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute — so surely a second is just 1/(24 x 60 x 60), or 1/86400, of a day, right? Well, it turns out that defining time isn't that simple. We're used to thinking...

Nov 23, 2023

What is the largest known prime number?

Prime numbers have been investigated for more than 2,000 years, since at least the era of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. There are infinitely many, but what is the largest known prime number? Prime numbers are those that can be evenly divided only by 1 and themselves, such as 3...

Feb 22, 2024

World's oldest known decimal point discovered in merchant's notes from 1440s Italy

The decimal point is 150 years older than historians thought it was, newfound notes from 15th-century Italy reveal. Decimal points are so simple, it seems like they should have existed forever. These handy mathematical tools break up whole numbers into tenths, hundredths and thousandths, making computation much simpler than with...