This optimisation problem is an ideal opportunity to use the real-world context of logistics as an application of first fit algorthims.

In this activity students have to allocate a number of different jobs to different employees within certain constraints. As part of the task students are introduced to first...

The aim of each challenge is for students to complete each of the five tasks, recording their results on the answer sheet entitled “To open the padlock”. Students obtaining the correct ‘grand total’ have successfully completed the challenge.

The number padlock challenge contains five number challenges, one...

Act 1

A picture is shown some packs of pain relief tablets...

This activity from Cre8ate maths lends itself to the development of personal thinking and learning skills, based on activities for a playground. Making a maze involves students in quite complex 2-D visualisation, working with a prepared spreadsheet, in excel, which encourages students to refine and redraft their...

Palaeontology strives to discover evidence so that we might learn more about the fossil remains of life and understand how they lived, functioned and even died. Scientists at The University of Manchester have been using state-of-the art imaging, chemical analyses and computer modelling techniques to study the...

A podcast from the Planet Earth Online collection and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Does your shopping basket contain chocolate, biscuits and shampoo? If it does, you may be unwittingly contributing to the destruction of the some of the world's pristine rainforests.

Manufacturers now use...

This Operational Research (OR) Society resource  invites students to analyse processes and efficiencies through a series of group challenges.

In the first activity students are asked to produce as many cups as possible by folding paper. Students are also asked to calculate the mean, variance and standard...

This resource contains step by step illustrated instructions of how to fold a variety of polygons, using A-size paper. The polygons featured include a square, an equilateral triangle, an isosceles triangle, kites, rhombi, a regular pentagon, a regular hexagon and a regular octagon. There are also investigations on...

In this Nuffield investigation students study paper sizes in the A and B international series, exploring relationships within each series and between the series.

The key processes are:

This group task asks students to design, build, evaluate and test paper planes.

The presentation outlines the expected outcomes and also contains teacher notes. It includes a link to a six minute BBC video about the design features involved when making paper planes.

There are a series of quadrilaterals on is presented on plain paper. The initial task is to form the shape derived by joining the midpoints of each side. The resulting quadrilateral is in each...

There are a series of quadrilaterals presented on a grid. The initial task is to form the shape derived by joining the midpoints of each side. The resulting quadrilateral is in each case a...

These animations, from the Wellcome Trust, help to show how parasitic worms are a major public health problem.

Thriving in numerous parts of the world associated with poor sanitation or water, these parasites have devised ingenious mechanisms that allow them to enter the human body, resulting in serious...

This ASAB (Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour) resource pack focuses on parental behaviour in nuthatches, in particular the parent-chick interactions during feeding.

The resource provides a summary of the key events in the rearing of a nuthatch brood and a film of parent-chick interactions during...