The Enigma Project from The Millennium Mathematics Project, University of Cambridge
The Lecture
On Thursday 2nd February Dr James Grime from Cambridge came to talk to Year 7 about the Enigma machine. We had a lecture where Dr Grime told us about code breaking. Then he showed us a real Enigma machine. He explained how the Enigma machine works by opening up the inside of the machine. We learnt that there are three little wheels inside and they do a full rotation before setting off the next wheel. The alphabet is on each wheel. We also learnt that even if you pressed ‘A' over and over again it would appear as different letters in the code.
I really enjoyed the lecture and have learnt a lot about code-breaking. We later put some of what we had learnt into practice during a workshop.
Article: Elisabeth Joyce, Yr 7
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The Workshop
After the lecture we took part in an Enigma workshop, which was great fun! We used interesting code breaking techniques to decipher complicated problems we were confronted with. We started with easy warm up questions to get our brains into gear and then moved on to some mind blowing codes which people had been faced with during World War II.
We used a clever technique to work out a code together. First we looked for the most common letter written in the secret code. The most common letter in the English alphabet is ‘E' so the letter that was used most in the writing of the secret code must be ‘E'. We then tackled the next most common letter and so on. From then on it became easier to work out the code. The workshop was very enjoyable.
Article: Mia Simovic, Yr 7