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.

Location

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

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

The Maths Outreach Team usually hosts a stall at the University of Edinburgh’s drop-in session in the National Museum of Scotland. 2024's stall was 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

As part of the festival, the Maths Outreach Team has previously run a guided mathematical walking tour, designed to be of interest to families, including mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike. A self-guided version of this tour is available via the link below.

The tour is about the mathematical history that has shaped Edinburgh, and the world at large, and centres around 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. It begins at the Witches' Well next to Edinburgh Castle and ends at the Scottish Parliament next to the Palace of Holyrood House. The tour takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes, exact duration depending on foot traffic.

The self-guided version is available online through the following link:

Self-Guided Tour