Rearranging Formulae

Programme Outline

Presenters Katie and Jamie introduce some familiar mathematical formulae and explain the term 'subject of a formula'. Jamie literally rearranges 'formulae' and comes up with some bizarre anagrams!

Jamie visits the venue for the Leeds Festival; a top live music event due to be staged in a few days time. He learns that plenty of advance planning is needed and in particular that someone must decide how many toilets to hire. We see how the number of toilets and the number of people expected can be related by a simple formula. Jamie demonstrates how to use the formula and how to change its subject.

Katie investigates hiring a car for a day and constructs a simple formula to work out the cost. Working to a fixed budget, Katie has to rearrange the formula to find out how many miles she can afford to travel in the slick Mercedes that she's chosen.

In this week's 'Tick or Trash', Katie and Jamie both have a go at rearranging the formula for converting temperatures between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Katie makes an error in her algebra and we see how brackets make a difference to the meaning of an algebraic term.

Jamie takes to the pool to investigate scuba diving with expert diver, Sally. She's using a formula to calculate his air consumption rate. To ensure that Jamie will have sufficient air in his tank, the formula needs to be rearranged so that the necessary calculation can be made. Having worked through the algebra they can now plan a safe dive.