Students from Loreto Secondary School in Bray examine an iPod at the UCD National Maths Week event

Can 1+1 ever equal 0? How does the Google search engine work? What is the largest picture ever taken of the universe? These were just some of the questions answered by UCD lecturers to over 600 secondary school students who packed Astra Hall to celebrate National Maths week on 13 October 2009.

The event kicked off with a look at the Maths behind Googling and social networking by Dr Neil Hurley from the UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics. Dr Hurley explained how the maths discovered by 18th century mathematician Leonhard Euler is relevant each time we run a Google search today.

"Euler's discoveries led to modern graph theory which is actively used to find information from the large social networks that are being created today," Dr Hurley explained. "This is big business as companies learn more about how potential customers communicate and even what their likes and dislikes are."

Dr Hurley is one of the Principal Investigators in the SFI-funded Clique strategic research cluster that is investigating large-scale social network analysis.

During his talk on the Maths behind the iPod, Professor Gary McGuire from the UCD School of Mathematical Sciences and Claude Shannon Institute outlined some of the mathematical principles behind modern encryption which ensures that our online transactions are safe.

"Web browsers use a form of maths called modular arithmetic where 1+1 can equal zero!" Professor McGuire explained. "This enables complex data to be stored encrypted."

Professor McGuire then challenged the students’ perception of randomness. “Have you ever felt like the random shuffle is not random?" Professor McGuire asked. "That’s because our perception of randomness is not accurate. Consecutive numbers often come up on winning lotto tickets in the same way as songs from the one album often play consecutively in an iPod shuffle.”

Leaving the 21st century behind, Dr Peter Duffy from the UCD School of Physics took the audience through a sequence of images to illustrate the staggering scales of the universe. "The deepest picture ever taken was the Hubble Deep Field," Dr Duffy said. "And scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are hoping to recreate conditions shortly after the Big Bang which would allow us to observe the smallest thing imaginable."

Secondary School student Lucy Woods from Loreto Bray commented: "I really liked the physics on scales. It is interesting to think how small we are compared to say the size of Orion."

"The aim behind these series of talks during National Maths week is to open up the hidden world of Mathematics in our everyday lives," explained Dr Orla Donoghue from the UCD Science Programme Office who organised the talks. "We had over 600 students attend with another 400 on a waiting list and we're already planning next year's theme."