Mathematics

The "Circles Stuck in a Triangle" problem I posted last week had a rather surprising solution to it. So much so that I had to rewrite the question so that text and diagrams made sense! So here is a…

If you are in the northern parts of the US (and lots of Canada) you will soon have sap running - and that means maple syrup. You probably don't think about the physiological aspects of syrup…

The timber industry, including pulp and paper producers, are among Canada's most important industries  - but they are also one of the largest producers of wastewater and greenhouse gas…

Richard Mankiewicz, our man in Bangkok, also known as Red Man (see his profile – no no, not because of Bangkok’s red light district - that would be Stickman, not Red Man!) has started a Math Puzzle…

I would like to start a new column of mathematical puzzles. Scientific American has one; New Scientist has one; so I hope Science 2.0 will be happy to host one! Preamble over, here's your "started…

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, the gender gap in math skills tests disappeared for the first time in history.  But a new paper says the issue might never have been there if the format for math…

It is somewhat surreal to see the discovery of the largest prime number paraded on prime time broadcast media. Mathematicians around the world are asked to explain the significance of this discovery…

How, when and where a pathogen is transmitted between two individuals in a population is crucial in understanding and predicting how a disease will spread and a new model seeks to lay the foundation…

A new paper outlines the many pitfalls associated with simulation methods such as Monte Carlo algorithms and other commonly used molecular dynamics approaches. The context of this paper is the…

Mathematicians have shown how to use an algorithm for analyzing void space in sphere packing where the spheres need not all be the same size.  This method could be applied to analyze the…