A Level Maths Lecture - Marcus du Sautoy

Marcus du Sautoy,

An Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor of Mathematics and co-host of the TV show "School of Hard Sums".

Having already purchased some of his books, "Does God play dice" and "Finding Moonshine", I have found an interest in Chaos or Clear Cut and how the events that we encounter are a result of different actions.
He spoke showed us a contraption, that I think that he made. It was a small; two pieced rod that was attached to a plank of wood, and had two pivots, acting almost as a leg, with hip and knee pivots. The contraption showed that given different amounts of energy and height that he pushed the device with, it would react extremely differently. This was the introduction to the idea of 'Chaos'.
He exposed us to the life cycle of Lemmings. They are small creatures and have an unusual life span where every few years, the population massively decreases. He used the idea of Chaos to show that the lifespan of the lemmings was completely random and it was a mystery of why the lemmings suddenly would all die out. It turns out the BBC made a documentary - The 1958 Walt Disney documentary, White Wilderness, Part II, that showed the BBC recording the lemmings jumping off cliffs and committing suicide; and this was the reason to their fall in population. However it turns out that it was all fake and that this was not the natural nature of the lemmings at all. He also spoke about another type of creature that died out every 17 years. Mathematicians had wondered why many creatures all had relationships with life cycles and prime numbers, such as 17. Eventually it was theorised that their life cycle was strategically planned to avoid contact with predators. It was shown that if the predator returns every 3 years to where the creatures live, it would take 51 years for the two species to cross paths, and therefore gives them a higher chance of survival, than say if they had a life cycle of 6 years, where they would meet every 6 years. This idea of creatures using prime numbers as a survival instinct was very interesting.
Finally he spoke about Football. What is a lecture without football! He mentioned the World famous free kick goal by Roberto Carlos vs France in 1997. He spoke about the trajectory of the curve of the ball and how there is mathematics behind it. He said that the ball, as you may have sometimes seen, had the appearance of being weightless, and floating while travelling. This was because the force was so great on the ball, that Chaos was actually occurring and the ball was not able to spin, and therefore travelled in a straight line. However, when the trajectory of the ball had reached a certain point; the forces and spin on the ball kicked in, the the fall reared off to the left at the last minute, scoring in the bottom right corner; leaving the goalkeeper and everyone else who saw it shocked.