fire2 - Chalkdust

Calum is a lecturer in physics at Edge Hill University where he studies topological solitons and enjoys talking about maths and physics to anyone who will listen. He can often be found on the side of a mountain or out on a bike, talking to himself about solitons.

Oπnions: In defence of toy models
Calum gets on his soap box about toy models
Cryptic wordsearch, Issue 19
Can you solve it?
On the cover: skyrmions
Sven Bjarke Gudnason and Calum Ross introduce you to the wonderful world of skyrmions
The simplest difficult task
Factorisation is often used in cryptography. But there's something even simpler which turns out to be just as hard.
Menace: the Machine Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine
Teaching a bunch of matchboxes how to play tic-tac-toe
Fun with water bells
Explaining how surface tension makes water form surprising shapes