A set of guidelines adopted by 45 states this year may turn children into "little mathematicians" who don't know how to do actual math. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for TheAtlantic.com ...

Physicists construct theories to describe nature. Let us explain it through an analogy with something that we can do in our everyday life, like going on a hike in the mountains. To avoid getting lost, ...

William Ross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Several years ago one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem ...

Complex numbers seem to have an almost mystical aura surrounding them. Perhaps it’s because of the terminology used for them – for example, they have a ‘real part’ and an ‘imaginary part’, and they ...

In standard quantum mechanics, complex numbers are used to describe the wavefunction. Although this has so far proven sufficient to predict experimental results, there is no theoretical reason to ...