Visit to King's Lodge School

Miss Martin and I went to spend an hour with both Y6 classes at King's Lodge school in Chippenham this afternoon.  It was part of their topic on World War 2, and we went to do a bit of maths, and a bit of history about code breaking - in particular code breaking during the war.

We started with a bit of more ancient history - messages wrapped around sticks, shaved heads and tattoos, and even messages written on the inside of a hard boiled egg!

Next we talked a bit about the Caesar Shift - to download your own code wheel click here...

We even had a play with a virtual German Enigma machine.  It has got 15 000 000 000 000 000 000 possible settings!  To play with the settings and encrpyt your own messages you can click here...

To finish students solved a murder mystery, where clues covered a range of different techniques. The key to each of the clues can be found here.

Thankyou to King's Lodge for inviting us in, and a massive well done to Y6 - we were very impressed with how well you engaged with the discussion and the challenges!

National Cipher Challenge 2011

It is back, one of the most fun and eagerly awaited competitions of the year (for me anyway!)

The National Cipher Challenge is a codebreaking competition open to schools across the UK.  Registration opens on Thursday 15th September, with the first challenge on Thursday 29th September at 3:15

We are looking for teams of about 4 students per team willing to take part.

Training will be given in Maths Club time, Tuesdays after school and open to everyone.

For more details, come and see Mr Smy, or just turn up to maths club on Tuesday.

The Competition site is http://www.cipher.maths.soton.ac.uk/.

Good Luck!  As well as the national Leaderboard, we will be posting a John Bentley Leader board here on the blog.