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DAILY LIFE
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION-MATHS IN NATURE-MATHS
HELP OUR LIVES-MATHS IN
ENGINEERING-GEOMETRY IN CIVIL-
MATHS IN MEDICINE-MATHS IN
BIOLOGY-MATHS IN MUSIC-MATHS IN
FORENSIC-CONCLUSION.
INTRODUCTION
What use is maths in everyday life?
"Maths is all around us, it's everywhere we go". It's a lyric
that could so easily have been sung by Wet Wet Wet. It may
not have made it onto the Four Weddings soundtrack, but it
certainly would have been profoundly true.
Not only does maths underlie every process and pattern that
occurs in the world around us, but having a good
understanding of it will help enormously in everyday life.
Being quick at mental arithmetic will save you pounds in the
supermarket, and a knowledge of statistics will help you see
through the baloney in television adverts or newspaper
articles, and to understand the torrent of information you'll
hear about your local football team.
MATHS IN NATURE
HEXAGON IN NATURE
A honeycomb is an array of hexagonal (six-
sided) cells, made of wax produced by
worker bees. Hexagons fit together to fill all
the available space, giving a strong
structure with no gaps. Squares would also
fill the space, but would not give a rigid
structure. Triangles would fill the space and
be rigid, but it would be difficult to get
honey out of their corners.
FRACTIONS OF TOMATO
You can cut all sorts of fruit and
vegetables into fractions: cut a
tomato in half, an apple into
quarters or a banana into eighths,
although you would have to be very
accurate. An orange might have 20
segments, and each would be a
20th of the whole orange
ROTATIONAL SYMMETRY IN GLOBE
A globe is a good example of rotational
symmetry in a three-dimensional object.
The globe keeps its shape as it is turned
on its stand around an imaginary line
between the north and south poles. The
globe shown here dates from the late
15th or early 16th century and is one of
the earliest three-dimensional
representations of the surface of the
Earth. It can be found in the Historical
Academy in Madrid.
UNDERSTANDING
PERCENTAGE
Using money is a good way of
understanding percentages. As there
are 100 pence in £1, one hundredth of
£1 is therefore 1 pence, meaning that 1
per cent of £1 is 1 pence. From this we
can calculate that 50 per cent of £1 is 50
pence. This photograph shows three
British currency notes: a £5 note, a £10
note and a £20 note. If 50 pence is 50
per cent of £1, then £5 is 50 per cent of
£10, and so £10 is 50 per cent of £20.
DECIMAL CALCULATOR
• A pocket calculator is one way in which
decimals are used in everyday life. The
value of each digit shown is determined
by its place in the entire row of
numbers on the screen. In this
photograph, the 7 is worth 700 (seven
hundreds), the 8 is worth 80 (eight tens)
and the 6 is worth 6 (six ones).
SYMMETRY IN TOWER
MATHS HELPING OUR LIVES
An article in the Sunday Times in June 2004
revealed the fact that you can't even assume that
buying larger bags of exactly the same pasta
would work out cheaper. It said that in many of
the supermarkets buying in bulk, for example
picking up a six-pack of beer rather than six single
cans, was in fact more expensive.
The newspaper found that the difference can be
as much as 30%. The supermarket chains may
be exploiting the assumption people have that
buying in bulk is cheaper, but if you work it out
quickly in your head you'll never be caught out.
SPOTTING DODGY STATISTICS
How many adverts have you heard that
make some claim such as "8 out of 10
women prefer our shampoo to their old
one"? Did those enthusiasts think it was
greatly better, or not really much of a
difference? What about the other 20%?
They might have absolutely hated it
because it made all their hair fall out! And
what question were they answering: that
they really believe it made their hair any
cleaner than a different shampoo, or that
they preferred the smell, or shape of the
bottle?
MATHS IN
ENGINEERING
• If it is rainy and cold outside, you will be
happy to stay at home a while longer and
have a nice hot cup of tea. But someone
has built the house you are in, made sure
it keeps the cold out and the warmth in,
and provided you with running water for
the tea. This someone is most likely an
engineer. Engineers are responsible for
just about everything we take for granted
in the world around us, from tall buildings,
tunnels and football stadiums, to access
to clean drinking water. They also design
and build vehicles, aircraft, boats and
ships. What's more, engineers help to
develop things which are important for
the future, such as generating energy
from the sun, wind or waves. Maths is
involved in everything an engineer does,
whether it is working out how much
concrete is needed to build a bridge, or
determining the amount of solar energy
necessary to power a car.
GEOMETRY IN CIVIL
This a pictures with some basic
geometric structures. This is a
modern reconstruction of the
English Wigwam. As you can
there the door way is a
rectangle, and the wooden
panels on the side of the
house are made up of planes
and lines. Except for really
planes can go on forever. The
panels are also shaped in the
shape of squares. The house
itself is half a cylinder.
LINES&PLANES
Here is another modern
reconstruction if of a
English Wigwam. This
house is much similar to
the one before. It used a
rectangle as a doorway,
which is marked with the
right angles. The house
was made with sticks
which was straight lines at
one point. With the sticks
in place they form squares
when they intercepts. This
English Wigwam is also
half a cylinder.
PARALLELOGRAMS