Information for schools

Revision sessions for Further Maths modules

The Lancashire and Cumbria Further Maths Centre is based in the department, and termly revision sessions are held on specific modules. To find out more, contact the Centre Manager, Paul Haworth.

National Science and Engineering Week

The Faculty of Science and Technology offers a series of events during Science Week, intended for Year 10 and Year 11 pupils. On Tuesday 15th March 2011 the department presented two sessions, hosted by Tom Button from the Further Mathematics Support Programme and Paul Haworth from the department. In 2012 the department's Undergraduate Admissions Tutor, Alex Belton, was part of the Faculty's team at the Big Bang Science Fair.

There are brief reports available on the Faculty's activities in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Please contact the Faculty's Science Partnership Officer, Alan Darragh, for further information and to register interest for future events.

Faculty of Science and Technology taster day

The annual Faculty Taster Day for Year 12 students will take place on Tuesday 3rd July 2012. The department will provide the following sessions.

• The mathematics of code breaking – Sam Livingstone

Writing and deciphering coded messages is often thought of as the pastime of spies or secret police, so it may be a surprise that it actually involves a lot of interesting maths.

Julius Caesar used simple methods more than 2000 years ago to send messages across the battlefield without them being read by the enemy. In the years since, codes have become more and more sophisticated, with mathematicians playing an ever-increasing role in designing and cracking them. Code breakers played a pivotal part in the Second World War, and in the age of the World Wide Web it would be impossible for banks and other businesses to operate without secure ways of sending information. In fact, nowadays whenever you use a debit card mathematical codes are employed to ensure that no one can steal your PIN number.

This talk will introduce some of the key ideas of making and breaking codes, and show how maths can help you keep your private information private!

• Maths for the win and the design of games – Jak Marshall

We've all been involved in a game at some point, sometimes without even knowing it. When it comes to sport, games, war or romance it helps to have an effective strategy in mind. Even simple tasks such as passing somebody in the street require decisions that we take for granted yet make on a regular basis. Like it or not, choices are a fact of life and knowing how to make good ones is of great importance to us, whether we're deciding how to run our country's hospitals, manage the local football team or just win at noughts and crosses.

During this talk we will delve into all of these problems and more, drawing from a wide array of techniques and ideas from the world of mathematics and statistics. In addition to making the audience world champions at rock-paper-scissors, there will be a discussion of how good game design can benefit society and how the world acts as a game under natural or man-made conditions.

A report on last year's event can be found here. Please contact Alan Darragh to register an interest for 2012.