Mathematical Research from Toy Models

JOINT LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY/ GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTURE 'Toy' here has a special sense: an object of daily life which you can find or make in minutes, yet which, if played with imaginatively, reveal behaviours that keep seasoned mathematicians and physicists puzzled for a while. The lecture will consist of tabletop demos of such toys, together with simple, robust modelling of what is going on. The theme that emerges is singularity. The transcript and downloadable versions of th...