Year 12 students studying Maths at A Level had the opportunity this month to attend the UK's second ever Maths Fest. A homage to all things mathematical, the day aimed to inspire young people to take maths further and introduce us to whole new branches of mathematics, much of which does not appear on the school syllabus. Katie Speckles engaged with the audience by giving us timed puzzles to work on, before talking about some of maths' greatest unsolved puzzles - whilst in the Maths Slam, students from a variety of schools gave presentations on maths that interested them beyond the syllabus, covering topics such as the base 10 system we usually use for counting and an uncommon proof that $$\sqrt{2}$$ is an irrational number.

Further talks explored the variety of jobs involving maths, with Eugénie von Tunzelmann from the SFX industry explaining her career path, which took her from an engineering degree to working on the special effects for some of the biggest films of recent years - including the Harry Potter franchise, Iron Man 2 and most notably Interstellar, where she worked as part of a team to program visual effects for a scientifically accurate black hole.

James Grime, of the famous YouTube channel Numberphile, talked about the pivotal role maths plays in technology today, from the basic workings of a computer to Wi-Fi, CDs, cryptography and more.