News Bubble Speech at Collyer’s 03.06.2022

Collyer’s hosted Dr Filippo Cagnetti, a Reader in Mathematics and director of Admissions and recruitment for the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex, who gave an interesting talk on the topic of mathematical analysis and illustrated this through the mathematics of bubbles.

Joel Hofmann, Head of Maths, explained: “Dr Cagnetti explored and discussed questions such as “why are bubbles round?” and explained some of the maths used to prove this result. He also demonstrated what happened when bubbles have to meet certain conditions, such as being made in a cube frame – the result was not what we expected!

“It’s really important that our students get to see how the topics that they’re learning now can lead to new and interesting fields of research in future. As many of our students go on to study maths or a related subjects at university, we feel opportunities such as this talk are really useful for them, and Dr Cagnetti certainly brought the subject to life in a very enjoyable way.”

Vice Principal (Pastoral) Andrea John said: “Huge thanks to Dr Filippo Cagnetti, and our very own Joel Hofmann, for creating this worthwhile educational experience.”

Maths teacher Greg Burchett said: “It was a very interesting talk. Dr Cagnetti certainly is a knowledgeable and engaging speaker, and the students were thrilled at seeing such a practical demonstration of the maths discussed. They also got to see that maths isn’t an old subject, as many of the breakthroughs in this topic have happened recently!”

Fellow maths teacher Peter Mattock was delighted: “What a clever way to engage our learners! Several students approached me after the presentation to tell me how much they had enjoyed the talk. An inspiring ‘bubble speech’!”