Edinburgh Science Festival

Since ancient times, humans have been fascinated by shapes and structures, but looks can be deceiving! Mind-bending mirrors make marvelous optical illusions, mapmakers fight to make flat maps from a round Earth, and is it possible to know what "four-dimensional space" would look like? Presented by The University of Edinburgh, Summerhall and ASCUS Art & Science, in partnership with Edinburgh Futures Institute, you can explore the difference between how things really look, and how you might perceive them.

Location

Basement Galleries in Summerhall (EH9 1PL). For directions to the venue, please visit: Location - Summerhall, Edinburgh

Date and Time

Saturday 30 March - Sunday 14 April between 11am - 5pm. 

Entrance is free and there is no booking required.

You can take a sneak peek at the exhibition through our Outreach volunteer Guadiana's ESF 2024 takeover on our Instagram (@EdinUniMaths).

The Maths Outreach Team will be running a stall at the University of Edinburgh’s drop-in session in the National Museum of Scotland. This year’s stall will be themed around the mathematics of knots and some of the combinatorial patterns underlying computing.

Location

Learning Centre Level 2, Event Space, National Museum of Scotland

Date and Time

Tuesday 9 April - Friday 12 April with slots of 10.30am - 12.30pm and 1.30pm - 4.30pm

Entrance is free and there is no booking required.

As part of the festival, the Maths Outreach Team is running a guided mathematical walking tour, designed to be of interest to families, including mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike. Learn about the mathematical history that has shaped Edinburgh, and the world at large, as we take you on a tour down the Royal Mile.

All children need to be accompanied by an adult; the tour is child friendly and there are no steps or stairways on the route. The tour begins at the Witches' Well next to Edinburgh Castle and ends at the Scottish Parliament next to the Palace of Holyrood House. The guided tour takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes, exact duration depending on foot traffic.

This version of the walking tour was developed by the Maths Outreach Team in 2021. A self-guided version is also available online through the following link:

Self-Guided Tour