Double Maths First Thing: Issue 65

Double Maths First Thing has an army of clones Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of working things out. I had a delightful chat with young Bill about complex numbers and matrices and noticed that the difference between him and most of my students is that he wants to know how things work and how they fit together and why, while most young mathematicians I meet are interested in learning rules that get the Right Answer. Links There’s a solar eclipse happening today! Over the UK, it’s only partial (coverage from around 6pm-8pm our time); you can check details where you are here. Don’t look directly at it, that will frighten it. Colanders make very good shadow-creators. Here is a worksheet about the trigonometry of eclipses, a neat “when will we ever use that in real life?” answer; I found this Desmos activity a bit more engaging. Staying in space, I understand that the world’s richest person isn’t content with crashing cars into…