hi everyone I've got a guest with me
today this is Katie Chico who's CEO of
Matt's world UK which is a project to
set up a a maths Discovery Centre in UK
so why it's gonna be like hands on maths
things you can do like a space where
there's things to play with and puzzles
yeah a big fun space full of math which
I think will be excellent but we thought
we've got to ask you for your ideas of
what could go in yeah you're exactly the
kind of people we need to know from if
you're interested in James's channel
then you've got the right ideas for us
if you'd like to look at Matt's world UK
dot-com and see a little bit about our
mission be perhaps become a friend of
mass world UK all our contact details
there if you've seen something cool
mathematical something a great puzzle
great game or something that could be
demonstrated or a video then get in
touch and let us know we'd love to hear
from you and hear your ideas yes so what
you've brought along with us today is
some examples of what might be in this
maths Discovery Center so we've started
got puzzle to start with which you are
quite excited by it's a spatial
reasoning game it's called the genius
square by the happy puzzle company yeah
it's really cool I've never seen this
before and you showed me this earlier
and it is really cool so you roll these
dice reach determines where you place
these pecs - grid and now we have to
fill the remaining space with these kind
of checkers pieces here yeah and you
were telling me some of the figures for
this you said there were six over 62,000
configurations for those little pegs and
then each one of those has at least one
solutions some of them have multiple
solutions which I find amazing that
they're every possibility that we can
get from the pegs has a solution if you
want to race me I do want to race you
I mean how they've set it up so they all
have a solution I don't know but I
imagine it's to do with how the dice are
configured so that only certain
different combinations can appear still
the 60 mm they all have a solution we
only need to find one let's do it okay
so shall we say three two one go yeah
you can say okay
two one go okay I'm gonna warn you that
I can't talk at the same time or
anything so you're gonna be the one
who's doing all the talk to talk so what
bothers me is that we don't have a sort
of mass Discovery Center in the UK so
you have things like this in other
countries so I visited some myself I've
been to and MoMA in the US and I've been
to places in Spain and Germany has oh
look at this you swine I just knew if
you distracted me talking I won't be
able to beat you I could be here for the
rest of the day finishing this off you
know yeah absolutely
so Germany has a thirteen and you know
we there's a wonderful no math in New
York and UK has none so if you could
imagine like you know what it would be
like to be in the UK without a single
library or single art gallery we've been
saying but that's the position the UK is
in for maths there's no dedicated
cultural space thank goodness I wasn't
too behind you I feel bad about that
we did do another take of it and you did
win on that but best of ivory much but
when I visited these other discovery
centres in other countries
I found these kinds of things far more
engaging yeah
then things I've seen in museums when
it's things on display in a gas box yeah
and even Science Center's when there's a
button to press and you go oh right that
lights up and then you walk away yeah
yeah so I think we've got some awesome
things we can do with maths you know we
can really engage people's brains and
they can do some mathematics in a way
where it's kind of easy to access the
first step so it's quite easy to get
going on this puzzle not not threatening
we want non-threatening high ceiling
games but we also want to have some that
wow how fancy get in science discovery
centres you know if we could have
explosions that would be awesome so we
want a little bit of the WoW and we also
want people to actually do some so to
show you some what
like pretty things that we might have in
Matt's world UK and you brought in some
pieces like bangles yeah so these are
towards it's not surrounded Taurus I'll
give you one told yeah so if you just
like let them pop up so you have a 5
knots going one way and two not going
the other direction and that makes this
nice well it makes it have this nice
kind of pop up motion but it also gives
it some actual nice movement as well go
yeah maybe and I think it can move boof
nice there me yeah so we just want
people to see some nice mathematical
objects it's kind of relaxing as well as
kind of therapeutic it's kind of nice
but there is max in this I don't know
max of not yeah this is like some not
there is a big area of mathematics I
think it's quite useful for
understanding things like DNA these are
strings which get all knotted up and
need to be unknotted and the idea is to
have themes in this discovery Center
yeah it will be zoned by kind of a topic
where it might be applied or by the type
of math that's involved so we'd want to
look at things like maths of health
research so amazing discoveries are made
with mathematicians within health
research
you know finding the structure of
viruses and advancing cancer research
and we will have things like maths in
space another nice big WOW factor
subject and lots of tinkering objects
because people like us do like doing
tinkering and fixing things and working
out how things work yeah well with the
puzzle I I just want to analyze that
puzzle now so if I saw that in the
museum I will want to go away and work
out how that worked
yeah maybe that's what makes me a
mathematician yeah that's exactly what I
want to do so I'm really engaged by that
and then we brought in a third thing
here which is a pretty thing to show off
which one of these I don't know some
people may have seen these kind of
things before come like a Newton's
Cradle and what is this
yes our pendulum waves I think a few
people have seen videos of it on the
Internet Maxwell Duque has like a big
life-size one of these but I've just
brought a little one so we could fit it
on camera
so it's just pendulums all of different
lengths and
because they're all different months
they've got different periods so you get
these nice falling in and out of phase
is happening a little bit like the
harmony in music you know some things
forth in and out of phase because
they're that kind of length so it's
about inspiring people aspiring young
people general public it's the general
public what we want to do is we want to
kind of fix the UK's cultural attitude
to maths so not everybody has to be a
mathematician but we would like people
to all have a warm place in their heart
for maths and generally positive and
encouraging and just know that it really
has a big role to play in society you
know we we can't afford to have a great
big skills gap in maths well so we want
to involve people who are naturally
maths enthusiastic but we also want to
bring in people who previously would
have thought I they didn't like maths we
want to change that no where are we at
the moment this is the ultimate aim to
have a space where we can have these
kind of things where are we at the
moment so the plan is to raise funds and
build the contents of the museum first
as touring exhibitions going theme by
theme so we are just at the stage where
we have raised enough funds to make a
problem solving exhibition which will
once we built it tour science discovery
centres around the UK and so hopefully
you can all come along and have a go and
see if you can do these puzzles faster
than James and where should people go to
help so we want ideas we want people's
suggestions yes so please do go to mass
Wells UK get the contact details up and
get in touch with us you can see how
we're developing there you can sign up
to our newsletter but if you want to
send any of your cool maths ideas or
thoughts then just get in touch which I
know these people will do awesome so if
you have been thanks for watching