Maths and the Real World

"Go deep down into anything and you will find mathematics" - Dean Schlicter


Often a lot of students who first begin algebra or quadratic equations fail to see how this has any implications on the real world. The aim of secondary school seems less to inform about the uses and necessities of mathematics and more on driving the knowledge into your head.


But maths in all its bewildering complexity and brute simplicity is all around us whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Science is all compromised from formulas and predictions, all of which is algebra. Some of the greatest and most eloquent works in science are equations.


The basis of quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger Equation,  is a relatively complex form of algebra involving constants and variables to plot possible points at which a particle can be at. Almost the entirety of mechanics relies on inputting numbers to calculate forces and other movements. And engineering is virtually completely maths. The importance of algebra is clear for all to know.

Obviously this is incredibly advanced and I do not want

you to focus too much on the content and meaning of the

equation, more on the algebra behind it and how this can

be used, regardless of the difficulty level

.

However, my love for maths does not come from number crunching. Altering one number into another via some function, is of course the most obvious way in which maths is related to everything, but it is not the beautiful way.


Bertrand Russell famously said that: "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty". And the majesty that maths holds can be represented by the elegance of space. Space is perhaps one of the only ways to think of infinity, the size of which we can currently see is 46 billion years, or around 45,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres in radius. Estimates of planet sizes, dark matter and even black holes; all are only possible with maths and how it is implied to the real world and the universe.

Nature also likes to throw in a little bit of maths occasionally, times of the year when animals hibernate and mate are often prime years as they're harder to predict because of a lack of a pattern. The fibonacci spiral is seen in many natural phenomena, as well as perfect shapes occurring regularly.

The fibonacci spiral is seen in many shells, the stretch that

maths has really has no limit

.

I will also do a future post discussing the economy, how it works and how maths is applied to that.