These are the show notes for episode 50 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 50 is one half of the square of the base of our number system, a fact which seems to give it an arbitrary significance.

So as this is the special half-century episode of the podcast I have a treat which I have been saving for just such an occasion. On a trip to Liverpool earlier in the year I sat down with Dr. Sebastien Guenneau of the University of Liverpool who told me about his work on invisibility cloaks. You can find out a lot more about Sebastien’s work in metamaterials on his website or by reading the New Scientist article “Invisibility cloak could hide buildings from quakes” and the Physics World article “Invisibility cloak for water waves“.

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