At the end of the Autumn term, just before school closed for Christmas, Mr Myers - Head of Maths Faculty and champion of the Maths merit badge scheme, awarded a number of students for their hard work and the amount of merits they had received in Maths alone. Following on into this term, a number of students have worked particularly hard, especially during a period of remote learning due to Lockdown, and have been awarded a badge and certificate to celebrate the achievement of receiving 50 merits in Maths. Mr Myers gathered students a bubble at a time, to hand out their award and explain a little about the Mathematician who is represented on their badge.
Year 10 students were the first to be awarded, with Mr Myers explaining the work of the Gottfried Leibniz, whose work from 1679 developed an arithmetic binary system which is the basis of all electronic computer machine code. We would not have modern day computers if it had not been for the work he achieved at that time.
Year 9 students received a badge with Pythagoras on, one of the most recognised names in Maths due to his work on the Pythagoras Theorum.
The last group were the Year 8 students, with a proud Head of Year Mr Long looking on, who received a badge for 50 merits. This badge features Aryabhata, who was born in 467 AD, but his work was not well regarded until 1929, as it was thought to be the work of 2 mathematicians. Not much is known of his life, however there is some evidence of his work, which was not understood until over one thousand years later in Europe. He derived significant developments in Trigonometry and is thought to be the source of the term 'Sine'.
Mr Myers was very proud to award one student, Cole from Year 8, with a second badge and certificate awarding him for his amazing achievement of 100 merits in Maths alone. He is the first student in school to reach this milestone, and he has worked incredibly hard even through Lockdown.
The second badge Cole receives is for Carl Gauss, whose Mathematical prowess was noted from the age of 7 when he started school. By 21 he wrote 'Disquisitiones Arithmeticae', which is fundamental to number theory and still shapes the subject today. A known perfectionist, he refused to publish his work until it was beyond reproach, it is said that if he had allowed his work to be released in a timely manner he would have advanced the subject by 50 years. He always had thirst for knowledge and the following quote shows his love of learning -
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again."
Mr Myers and the teachers in the maths department want to inspire all students to work hard in their classes and through their homework, to achieve enough merits to be awarded all the badges available per year group. He highlighted that Year 7 will be the first year group who have the potential to achieve the full set of 12 badges by the end of Year 10.
We are very proud of all students hard work and look forward to handing out many more badges over the next term. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
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Maths Merit Badge Awards Spring 2021
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