The Euler Society

To encourage a high element of teamwork and competition, the students were split into three teams of three and there were four distinct phases to this first meeting.  The first paid tribute to Leonhard Euler, after whom this now well established Lower Sixth Form society is named, with particular reference to his famous identity e^iπ  + 1 = 0, which links arguably the five most important constants in mathematics. We considered briefly the ‘interesting number paradox’, which gave the members a taste of the properties of the first few natural numbers and an insight into the wide range of properties that numbers possess.

FY then performed an impressive card trick in which he separated four Aces from a hand of sixteen cards and linked it to the maths behind a simple paper folding exercise. With a little coaxing, all understood how this worked and will, I am sure, try it out on other audiences.

 We changed tack to prove Thales’ theorem:  that the angle in a semi-circle is right-angled, which is credited to the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales in c600BC. The members were then given an outline diagram of the mechanism of an up-and-over garage door and invited to describe how it operates according to Thales’ theorem, thus allowing a car adequate clearance when opened or closed.

The last phase of our hour long meeting was a race between the three teams to piece together the cut up lines of the solution to a quartic equation with complex solutions. This exercise – based on maths that is beyond what they had met to date – invoked a high degree of teamwork and was a close run affair.

This current Euler Society, with a membership of eleven, comprising ten double mathematicians and one single mathematician, continues the trend of growing numbers taking up Further Maths at A Level, and looks to have a lively, stimulating and competitive year ahead, judging by the enthusiasm and intelligence displayed in this opening meeting.

Mr Woodcock