Sana Khan is a Master Teacher at Vedantu with over 2+ years of experience in teaching children online. She is passionate about Maths and enjoys sharing unique methods of learning for students from classes 6-8.
Have you ever thought about what 1 + 1 equals to? The obvious answer is 2 but, look at it in a different way, the answer would be a window! Try drawing the sum and watch the magic happen. Mathematics is a wonderful subject that is present everywhere around us. Apart from the confusing symbols and complex equations, maths is far from being dull. There are plenty of interesting facts about the subject that many of us would not have come across.
So, on this Mathematics Day, let us discover 10 fascinating things about the subject that you would blow your mind:
- Roman numerals represent numbers through different letters like how I is one and V is five and so on. However, zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
- Icosagon belongs to the family of polygons which is home to shapes like pentagon, hexagon, octagon etc. This lesser-known polygon has 20 sides, almost looking like a circle with small spikes.
- If you thought + and – symbols were discovered around the 18th and 19th Century, think again. These symbols have been in our existence since the 15th Century, to be specific, 1489 AD is when + and – were first used. Created by Johannes Widmann and Robert Recorde these symbols were derived from the Latin words plus and minus meaning “more” and “less”.
- In between a square, rectangle and a circle that have the same perimeter, do you know which shape would have the largest area? Circle would be the shape that has the largest area because it has a closed curve shape.
- Four is the only number that is spelt with the same number of letters as the number itself.
- Speaking more about connection between letters and numbers, forty is the only number in the mathematical universe that has letters that are in an alphabetical order.
- Did you know that the opposite sides of a dice always add up to 7? Try rolling two dice and see for yourself. For instance, combinations of 3 and 4, 1 and 6, 2 and 5 all add up to 7.
- Before a calculator was used to add, subtract, multiply and divide, an abacus was used to perform the same operations of mathematics. This inspired two universal scholars Wilhelm Schickard and Blaise Pascal to make this electronic device that performs complex calculations.
- When someone says, ‘I did it in a jiffy’ or the word ‘Jiffy’, did you know that the word comes from mathematics? Jiffy is the term used to describe 1/100th of a second and that is why it implies things that happen in a short moment.
- 9 is such a unique number that if you multiply 9 with any other number and add the digits of the product, the answer will be 9. For example, if you multiple 9 and 3 it equals to 27. If you add 2 and 7 you get the number 9! Try it with the other numbers and see the fun!
After hearing these exciting facts about maths, when someone says that it is not an intriguing subject ask them to think twice! These intriguing facts are a part of our daily life and hence that is why learning mathematics is both complex and thrilling.