Dr Tim Gabriel’s job involves making materials for batteries and solar cells which have tiny structures and shapes, allowing them to work more efficiently. He describes how his combined degree in chemistry and languages allowed him to spend a year in France. Tim also explains how his research career helped him to...

The Gaia spacecraft is a European Space Agency mission to map one billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.  This collection of resources allows students to analyse real data from the spacecraft.  The collection is divided into 3 sections:

• Background information for teachers and students on the Gaia...

The Big Ideas: the future of engineering in schools report, supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, reflects the views of leading engineering education experts and key stakeholders such as employers, parents and students. It proposes that students should be explicitly taught about engineering and the...

Learning ...

This article looks at...

The purpose of bin packing is to pack a collection of objects into containers called bins. The bins are all the same size and the objects to be packed are different sizes. The aim is to pack the objects into the bins using the fewest possible bins. In this example students are asked to save computer files onto a CD...

In this resource students are asked to play the role of a local theatre manager, tasked with finding the best way to organise the audience to minimise the amount of space they take up. To solve the problem students must apply a series of first fit algorithms.

The resource includes a teacher presentation,...

This package of Core Maths resources explore how to solve bin packing problems using the first fit decreasing algorithm.

Bin Packing: Teacher guide
The teacher guide presentation contains an introduction to the topic through the plumber’s dilemma before working through the best possible...

This resource looks at binary data and contains an Excel workbook with macros to enable recolouring/checking the colour of cells. A series of binary numbers are given in a rectangular grid of cells on the left when the workbook is first opened. Students are required to recolour the original binary grid, to show the...

Students always need practice in number system conversion. This resource gives them instant feedback and allows them to progress from conversion to binary addition. This would make an ideal homework activity. the file is a macro enabled worksheet and can be downloaded from the zip file.

The workbook contains a number of simulations designed to aid students understanding of the Binomial distribution.

Binomial distribution: simulated tossing a coin ten times. The probability of achieving 0,1,2… heads is calculated and displayed in a frequency table and a bar chart. The...

Most binomial questions define the binomial distribution and ask students to calculate the most likely value for x. In this activity, students are asked to explore whether the value for p can be found given the value for n and the most likely value for x. Subsequent pages of the presentation provide the solution to...

In this activity, students apply their knowledge of the binomial distribution to establish whether each of three rules, regarding the most likely outcome and the expected value, are true. The presentation contains a link to an applet which allows experimentation, and shows the binomial probabilities for various n...

This activity begins with the definition of the mean and the variance of a binomial distribution. Students are then challenged to take each definition and prove that they work for the binomial distribution B(3,p). The first task is for students to construct the probability distribution then calculate the mean and...