Imagine a horizontal rectangular tray with vertical sides, and a disc lying flat in the tray and rolling around the inside of the tray in such a way that its circumference is always in contact with the edge of the tray. We shall suppose that the disc has been rolling for ever in the past, and that it will continue to roll for ever in the future. What can we say about this physical system? Our aim is to illustrate the complexity and the discontinuous nature of the system under arbitrarily small changes in the size of the tray (a feature that is typical of many dynamical systems).

During my year as President of The Mathematical Association the government began a review of the curriculum across all subjects taught in school. Given the constant tinkering with the education system by every government, this is probably a sentence that any MA president could write during their tenure. But 2013 saw government really trying to layout their vision for what education should deliver in the coming decade.

In English, an aim of the curriculum review is to develop a student's love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment. Students will get to read Shakespeare, romantic poetry, the great novels of the nineteenth century together with seminal works of world literature. It is hoped that this will expose students to the great works of literature and allow them to acquire an appreciation of ‘our rich and varied literary heritage’ [1, p. 13].

In science, by building on fundamental ideas and concepts, the curriculum review aims to foster in students ‘a sense of excitement and curiosity about natural phenomena’ [1, p. 99]. Students will study the fundamental mechanics of the cell, learn about stem cells, photosynthesis and genomics; they will be exposed to radiation (in a theoretical sense) and the evidence for the Big Bang. Such fundamental ideas will give students the scientific knowledge to be able to understand the uses and implications for the impact of science on society.

What is the most symmetric quadrilateral you can think of? Most people would say ‘a square’, but having given this (or any other) answer, can you create your own definition of a ‘quadrilateral’, and of ‘most symmetric’, so that you can justify your answer as a rigorous piece of mathematics? This is a challenging investigation because the answer may not be the obvious one.

Often the main difficulty in solving a problem lies in finding appropriate definitions; here we must first consider the questions ‘what is a quadrilateral?’, and ‘what is a symmetry of a quadrilateral?’.

A ferry starting on one side of a river is to cross to the adjacent point on the opposite bank travelling at a constant speed f but moving against a variable river sneed We will ignore starting and stonninc difficulties which only operate for a short interval of time. The ferry moves so that it is always aiming at the target position T. The river is assumed to be straight and the speed of the river is given by the function r(x) which is non-negative, continuous and differentiable for 0 ≤ x ≤ a, where a is the width of the river. We shall show that the solution reduces to two integrations and the condition which determines whetIer the derry can reach its destination will be given.

Figure 1 shows a triangle ABC with the midpoints A′, B′ and C′ of its sides. The line segments AA′, BB′ and CC′ are called the medians, and the point G of their intersection the centroid. The line segments AG, BG and CG will be called, for lack of a better name, the semi-medians. It is interesting that the medians of any triangle can serve as the side lengths of some triangle. This property of the medians is referred to as the median triangle theorem in [1, §473, page 282], and is discussed, together with generalisations to tetrahedra and higher dimensional simplices, in [2].