Project presentation

Author: Stéphanie Ader

Class project

We travelled to London, and visited the Science Museum on the 22th of February, 2023.
20 students of the 1ère Euro Maths class attended the travel.
In the Winton gallery, each of them had a dedicated subject, randomly given. They had to take informations and pictures, in order to explain this subject back home.
This web site is the result of their work.

Science Museum and Winton gallery

The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road, in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019.

Inside the museum, the Winton gallery is dedicated to Mathematics. The Winton Gallery tells the story of how mathematics has shaped our world. It shows that mathematics is at the heart of everything we care about: life and death, war and peace, trade, money and more. An aeroplane hangs in the centre of the gallery. Making aircraft safe is just one example of how mathematics plays an important role in our lives. Here you can find people who use mathematics every day, at work, at home and at play. From salespeople to sailors, gamblers to garden designers, medics to the military – all of them use maths and all have interesting stories to tell. The gallery’s design, by Zaha Hadid Architects, is mathematical. Zaha Hadid studied mathematics and ideas about geometry inspired her designs. The aeroplane suspended at the centre inspired the gallery’s design. The glowing canopy and the layout of the showcases represent airflow around the aeroplane; you can notice airflow lines on the floor too. These features are driven by actual equations of airflow used in the aviation industry.