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Maths for Kids / Maths is Not Boring: The Kids Maths Podcast
Maths for Kids / Maths is Not Boring: The Kids Maths Podcast episodes
- What is the Collatz conjecture?Have you ever heard of a math puzzle that acts like a wild weather storm? In 1937, a mathematician named Lothar Collatz invented a simple number machine with just two rules: if a number is even, cut it in half. If it is odd, multiply it by three and add one! Sounds easy, right? But what happens next is pure magic! Instead of acting normally, the numbers bounce wildly up and down like hailstones caught in a massive storm cloud! Some climb up into the thousands, while others drop low, but eventually, every single number gets trapped in the exact same endless loop: 4-2-1! Scientists have used massive supercomputers to check over 295 quintillion numbers, and they all get sucked into this strange mathematical whirlpool. But here is the ultimate mystery: nobody in the world has ever been able to prove why it works or if a giant number exists out there in infinity that can finally escape! Join Mira and Finn as they explore the mind-bending Collatz Conjecture, the ultimate unsolved puzzle hiding right behind simple math!10 min
- What is Zeno's paradox?Have you ever tried to walk across a room, but realized you have to go halfway first? And then half of that remaining distance? And half of that? Welcome to one of the most mind-bending puzzles in history! Over 2,500 years ago, an ancient Greek thinker named Zeno of Elea came up with a massive brain-teaser called Zeno's paradox. He imagined a race between the world's fastest hero, Achilles, and a slow, creeping tortoise. Because Achilles is so fast, he gives the tortoise a big head start. But every time Achilles reaches the spot where the tortoise just was, the tortoise has moved a tiny bit forward! If this keeps happening forever and ever in smaller and smaller gaps, how does Achilles ever catch up? Join Mira and Finn on Maths is Not Boring as they unravel this ancient mystery! You'll discover how clever mathematicians finally solved this endless puzzle using the magic of limits. Get ready to realize that every time you walk to the kitchen for a snack, you are literally conquering infinity!13 min
- What was the first times table?Have you ever wondered who invented times tables? Or why three times four is exactly the same as four times three? It's time to discover the quiet magic of multiplication! Imagine lining up your favorite wrapped sweets on a table in three rows of four. Now, walk around to the side of the table. Suddenly, it looks like four rows of three, but you haven't moved a single sweet! Mathematicians call this amazing swapping trick "commutativity," and it perfectly hides in plain sight in chocolate bars, egg cartons, and even the folding seats in a cinema!But how long have humans known this math secret? Grab your time machine because we are traveling all the way back to ancient China around 305 BCE! You won't find paper books here. Instead, ancient scholars wrote their math on delicate bamboo strips! In the 2010s, historians pieced together 21 muddy, waterlogged bamboo strips found in an ancient tomb to discover the oldest decimal times table in the entire world!Join Mira and Finn as they solve a 2,000-year-old puzzle, explore why this magic trick doesn't work for subtraction, and reveal the hidden math shapes in your kitchen!12 min
- Platonic Solids for Kids: Why There Are Only Five Perfect Dice
The story of the Platonic solids for kids: the five perfect shapes studied by Theaetetus and Plato in ancient Athens, and how Euclid proved around 300 BCE there can never be a sixth.
• What makes a solid perfect: the same faces and the same corners
• Why only five shapes work, worked out with triangles, squares and pentagons at a corner
• Why each one makes a fair die, and where they turn up in salt crystals and viruses
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
10 min - Averages for Kids: Why No One Is Average in Every Way
The story of averages for kids: how around 1950 Gilbert Daniels measured 4,063 United States Air Force pilots and found that not one was average in every way.
• Why cockpits built for the average pilot fitted nobody
• What an average tells you about a crowd, and what it cannot tell you
• How the answer was seats and pedals that adjust, like the seats in a car
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
11 min - Binary for Kids: How Computers Count With Only 1s and 0s
The story of binary for kids: how Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote out a way of counting with only 0 and 1 in 1679, long before computers.
• How to count one, two, three and four in binary
• How Leibniz published his work in Paris in 1703
• Why switches that are only off or on made binary perfect for computers
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
12 min - Triangles for Kids: Why the Strongest Shape Has Three Sides
The story of triangles for kids: why a triangle will not squash flat when a square does, and how Gustave Eiffel built his tower in Paris from triangles in 1889.
• What engineers mean by rigidity
• How more than 18,000 iron pieces in the Eiffel Tower are laced into triangles
• Where triangles hold things firm, from bicycle frames to bridges
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
12 min - Googol for Kids: What a Googol Is and Who Named It
The story of the googol for kids: how nine-year-old Milton Sirotta named the number one followed by a hundred zeros for his uncle, mathematician Edward Kasner, around 1920.
• Why a googol is bigger than the number of atoms in the known universe
• The even bigger googolplex that Milton dreamed up
• How the word spread and gave a famous search engine its name
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
14 min - Fractions for Kids: How the Ancient Egyptians Shared Bread
The story of fractions for kids: how the Egyptian scribe Ahmes wrote down problems about sharing loaves of bread fairly about 3,500 years ago, in the scroll now called the Rhind papyrus.
• How the Egyptians built fractions from pieces with a one on top
• Why two thirds got a special sign of its own
• Where the Rhind papyrus is kept today
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
14 min - Tessellation for Kids: How Tiles Cover a Floor With No Gaps
The story of tessellation for kids: shapes that cover a floor with no gaps, and how David Smith from Bridlington in Yorkshire found a tile in 2022 whose pattern never repeats.
• Why squares, triangles and hexagons make repeating patterns
• How Roger Penrose found a never-repeating pattern with two shapes in 1974
• How David Smith's 13-sided hat was proved by a team of four in 2023
• Quiz questions to answer along the wayMaths is Not Boring: rated 5★ on Apple Podcasts and 4.7★ on Spotify. Follow or subscribe to hear the story of a new great idea in maths every day.
13 min
About Maths for Kids / Maths is Not Boring: The Kids Maths Podcast
From the publisher's feed
A groundbreaking podcast for curious kids aged 4-12 that proves maths is anything but dull.
Join our fictional AI hosts Mira, a brilliant 9-year-old, and her younger brother Finn, age…
7, as they set off on a journey into one great mathematical idea each episode. From numbers that never end and shapes with only one side to the strange rules of chance and the secret patterns in a snowflake, each episode uncovers an idea that is simple at its heart and extraordinary because it is everywhere - told in a way that actually makes sense to kids.
Nobody does sums here. Whether you're discovering why infinity comes in different sizes, how a shuffled pack of cards is almost certainly in an order no one has ever seen, why honeycombs are made of hexagons, where the number zero came from, or what makes a prime number special - Maths is Not Boring turns big ideas into stories that ignite curiosity and wonder, and gives kids one more clue to how the world works.
Because maths isn't a list of rules to learn. It's the most beautiful way anyone has ever found of seeing the world.
Nobody does sums here. Whether you're discovering why infinity comes in different sizes, how a shuffled pack of cards is almost certainly in an order no one has ever seen, why honeycombs are made of hexagons, where the number zero came from, or what makes a prime number special - Maths is Not Boring turns big ideas into stories that ignite curiosity and wonder, and gives kids one more clue to how the world works.
Because maths isn't a list of rules to learn. It's the most beautiful way anyone has ever found of seeing the world.
A note on why we use AI. For us, AI allows us to deliver learning at a scale and quality that previously would have been too expensive. If we make the odd technical error, or the sound goes a bit funny, bear with us, we’re trying our best. We hope you enjoy the show!