Why do some melodies feel instantly right, balanced, memorable and satisfying, even if you have never heard them before? New research from the University of Waterloo suggests that more than creativity ...

“Our goal was to build a clear mathematical bridge between abstract algebra and the experience of listening to music,” said study co-author Olga Ibragimova. “When we think of melodies as shapes we can ...

Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...

The 2008 Abel Prize was awarded to John Griggs Thompson of the University of Florida and Jacques Tits of the Collège de France for their contributions to group theory, the mathematical field that ...

Early in the morning during festivals, many Indian homes wake up to patterns forming quietly at the doorstep. White powder ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...

Hello, I'm Mr Firth, and together we're going to learn about lines of symmetry. Symmetry is when one side of a shape looks exactly like the other—just flipped. Lots of buildings use symmetry because ...

On the road to algebra, children must learn a weird idea: that numbers can be smaller than zero (negative) and can be mixed with numbers greater than zero (positive) in an equation. Now researchers at ...

A shape has a line of symmetry when the folded part sits perfectly on top with all edges matching. The number of lines of symmetry in a regular polygon is equal to the number of sides. A shape has ...