Maths for Kids / Maths is Not Boring: The Kids Maths Podcast

Have you ever been totally lost in a spooky corn maze, wandering around tall stalks as the sun goes down? What if we told you there is a secret math trick to escape ANY maze without a map? In this episode of Maths is Not Boring, Mira and Finn uncover the amazing secrets of the labyrinth! We travel back to an ancient Greek legend to see how the hero Theseus escaped the grumpy Minotaur's twisting labyrinth using just a ball of thread. But what if you don't have any string? Learn about the magical "right-hand rule"—a genius math trick where you never let go of the wall! Discover how tricky maze builders in 1690 created sneaky "islands" at Hampton Court Palace to mess up this rule, and find out why your very own robot vacuum cleaner uses maze math every single day to clean your living room. Grab your favorite listening spot and get ready to solve the ultimate puzzle. You will never look at a maze—or your vacuum cleaner—the same way again!

Have you ever watched a skateboarder do a crazy full spin in the air and heard someone call it a "360"? But wait, where does that giant number even come from? Why do we use 360 to measure one single spin? In this amazing episode of Maths is Not Boring, Mira and Finn uncover a mathematical secret that is over two thousand years old! We are traveling all the way back to ancient Babylon to meet the brilliant astronomers who first chopped the huge night sky into 360 tiny slices. Discover how the stars take one tiny step each night to make a full circle in about a year (which is super close to 360 days!), and why 360 is the most perfect number for dividing things up evenly! You will also learn why the sharp corner of your favorite book is exactly 90 degrees, and how these ancient numbers are still used today to steer giant ships and guide airplanes through the clouds! Get ready to look at a simple spin in a completely new way. Put on your ancient astronomer hat and let's go!

Imagine building a pyramid entirely out of numbers! Start with a single '1' at the very top. The only rule to build the rest? Every number inside is just the two above it added together! It sounds incredibly simple, but this one tiny rule creates one of the most magical shapes in the universe: Pascal's triangle! Join Mira and Finn as they uncover the mind-bending secrets hiding inside this famous number pyramid. You'll find regular counting numbers, secret patterns used for setting up bowling pins, and even a quick way to figure out how many pairs of friends you can make! But the best part? If you color in only the odd numbers, a beautiful, infinite mosaic of tiny triangles magically appears! Even though it's named after the French thinker Blaise Pascal from 1654, brilliant mathematicians and poets in ancient India, Persia, and China discovered it hundreds of years earlier. It can even help you understand games of chance like flipping coins and rolling dice! Get ready to explore an infinite puzzle that never, ever breaks!

Have you ever imagined building a snowman in the middle of July? That is exactly what could happen if we didn't have leap years! Join Mira and Finn as they uncover the mind-bending space secret behind February 29th. You will discover that a year isn't actually a neat 365 days long—it takes the Earth 365 and a quarter days to travel all the way around the Sun! Without that extra quarter of a day, our calendar would slowly drift away from the seasons until summer turned into winter.

Learn how the Roman leader Julius Caesar tried to fix this giant mess by adding one extra day every four years. But nature loves a tricky fraction, and his math was off by just eleven minutes! Find out how Pope Gregory XIII made an even cleverer rule, and hear the wild true story of why the people of Britain once had to skip eleven whole days in 1752—going to sleep on September 2nd and waking up on September 14th! Get ready to bend your brain and travel through time as we explore the incredible science of calendars!

Have you ever tried to measure something, only to find the number goes on forever? Join Mira and Finn as they uncover one of the biggest, wildest mysteries in the history of mathematics! Over two thousand years ago, a group of ancient Greek thinkers called the Pythagoreans believed the whole universe was built on neat, perfectly tidy fractions. But then, a man named Hippasus looked at a totally normal square and its diagonal line. When he tried to measure it, he discovered a wild, rebellious number that just wouldn't stop! These never-ending decimals are called irrational numbers, and their discovery literally shocked the ancient world! Learn how a simple bathroom floor tile hides a magical portal to infinity, and why a normal piece of A4 printer paper has a secret mathematical superpower. You actually hold an irrational number in your hands every single day without even knowing it! Get ready to look at straight lines, shapes, and paper in a completely new way. Tap play to dive into this mind-bending mathematical adventure!