Every four years, the world comes together to watch one of the most anticipated sporting events in history: the FIFA World Cup.

Behind all the anticipation, venue planning, and media fanfare, there are many artists and researchers who devote themselves to designing a new FIFA World Cup ball to be rolled out for the public eye (pun intended).

This post presents an overview of the geometric ideas behind the design of the FIFA 2026 "Trionda" ball, using Maple to visualize and explore these concepts in depth. The ideas presented here were inspired by this Scientific American Article. For more information and facts about the 2026 Trionda ball, as well how the shape of the ball impacts play on the pitch, I suggest you check it out!

FIFA ball designs are often inspired by one of the 5 Platonic solids. A Platonic solid is a convex polyhedron with each face being the same regular polygon with the same number of faces meeting at each corner.

This year, the Trionda ball was constructed from the simplest of these shapes, the tetrahedron, consisting of 4 triangles, with 3 faces meeting at each corner. Of the five Platonic solids, this shape has the fewest faces, making it the least sphere-like. Turning such a simple polyhedron into a smooth ball is therefore a surprisingly challenging geometric problem.

So how can we turn our pointy tetrahedron into something that rolls? Rather than trying to transform the entire tetrahedron at once, we can start by redesigning a single triangular face. The goal is to create a curved triangle that will fit perfectly with three identical copies of itself while covering the surface of a sphere.

 

I tried to evaluate the function

convert(BesselJ(nu, x), FormalPowerSeries)

only to obtain the Error message

Error, (in convert/FormalPowerSeries) input contains no or more than one variable.

Seems a rather strange error. I thought it would treat x as a single variable

@aroche 

Is there a Maple Support Update package for Maple 2025 ? If so, how do I download it?

Thanks, Roy

Hi Maple community, and all,

Have a small ask, regarding prime numbers.

see attached

vertical_list_of_prime_numbers.mw

vertical_list_of_prime_numbers.pdf

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Matt

I cannot find a description of the use of the form of dsolve and the following evaluation of its constants which are found in the downloaded worksheet.

Gnadig_2_problem_177_Rod_moving_on_a_wire_in_B_field.mw

Dear sir how to plots the graphs in three region BC from -1 to 0 and 0 to 1 and 1 to 2 
3_region_work.mw

Dear Maple users

I am testing Maple 2026, which will be used at our school after the summer holiday. I see that AI have now found its way to Maple on a new level. AI can be used internally via the AI Assistant, but as I understand it will also be possible to let ChatGPT use Maple in order to provide an answer, instead of using it's own way to do math. I just cannot figure out how it is done. Having a school license for Maple means we take part in the Maplesoft Elite Maintenance Program (EMP). In Maple 2026 i have found Maple MCP on the "My Maple" båndet. When I click it I am however just referred to the main page of Maplesoft. My question: How can I make Maple MCP work for me?

Kind regards,

Erik V.

Why doesn't a piecewise function plot correctly?

(1)   plot(sin((2*Pi)*100*t), t = 0 .. 1);        Plots correctly

(2)   s1 := t -> sin(200*t*Pi);
       plot(s1(t), t = 0 .. 1);                           Plots correctly

(3)   s2 := t -> piecewise(0 < t, 0, t < 10, sin(200*t*Pi), 0);
       s2 := proc (t) options operator, arrow; piecewise(0 < t, 0, t < 10, sin(200*t*Pi), 0) end proc

       plot(s2(t), t = 0 .. 1);                            Does not plot correctly. Only a blank plot is displayed.

Hi Maple community and others,

I'm very proud to present my code.

Sequences are fun,
for those who know, about them

consider Fermat numbers, of the form,
F(n) = (2^(2^n)) + 1.
goes like

3, 5, 17, 257, 65537, 4294967297, 18446744073709551617, 
340282366920938463463374607431768211457, ...

in oeis.org database at
https://oeis.org/A000215 .

Similarly we can have base 3,

B(a) = (3^(3^a)) + 1.
goes like, this,
4,28,19684, ...
online, in database, with Universal Resource Location (URL)
https://oeis.org/A129290

There could also be base 4, that grows even faster
 

double_exponential_2_and_3_and_4.mw

That is all that I have, for now.

Thank you for this free forum.
regards,
Matt

Hi Maple community, and all,

Here is a little Maple worksheet, shoing an interesting property of prime numbers.

Numerical evidence supports Andreca's conjecture.

see    

_Andricas_conjecture.mw

good fun

see, also
Andrica's Conjecture -- from Wolfram MathWorld
Enjoy
regards,
Matt

PS online at https://MattAnderson.fun/

PPS Have a good day, everybody.

Last week, we launched the Maplesoft Math Success Platform. 
 

This launch reflects a lot of conversations I’ve had over the past year with educators and institutions about what it means to teach and learn math in the age of AI. 

At first, many of those conversations were about visibility. If students were completing homework, quizzes, and other assessments with help from AI, those results became harder to interpret. Did students understand the work, or had they copied down a solution that made sense in the moment without building the understanding needed to do something similar on their own?

That visibility still matters. 

Over time, though, those conversations led to a more nuanced conclusion. The question is not simply how we prevent students from taking shortcuts. It is how we help them develop the mathematical judgment, intuition, and critical thinking they will need in a world where AI is part of how they learn and work. 

In some ways, that has become even more important. When answers are easy to generate, students need to be able to test ideas, recognize when something does not make sense, explain their reasoning, and trust their own thinking. 

That is why I am proud to share the launch of the Maplesoft Math Success Platform. 

Built on Maple, the platform brings together our math technology and extends it with analytics, AI-driven insights, targeted resources, and content expertise to help institutions support math learning in a more complete way. 

It gives instructors and learning support teams better insight into where students are struggling, supports the creation of better questions and learning experiences, helps students move beyond the answer, and helps institutions respond to a world where AI is now part of how students practice, study, and get help. 

You can learn more about the Maplesoft Math Success Platform on our website.

We also wrote more about the thinking behind this launch in our new whitepaper, Math Education in the Age of AI: From Grading Answers to Understanding Student Progress. It looks at why math education needs a new approach in the age of AI: one that helps instructors ask better questions, create learning experiences that build understanding, and use learning signals to see where students need support.

I’d love to hear what you think. How are you seeing AI change the way students learn, practice, and get help in math? And what kinds of tools or approaches do you think will be most important as math education continues to evolve?

A very stupid question :I want my one-dimensional output from Maple 2016 and also Maple 2026, use as one-dimensional input in my Maple 2026 , which I just bought. I'am very inpatient and think it must be very simple but too complicated for me. Before making a very extensive and timeconsuming study somebody should be able to tell me to perform this  by a few clicks .
Thanking you beforehand and I'll be very gratefull for your help.

Bartele de Jong The netherlands

In 2-D Math input:
In a product of more than two factors space is not allways sufficient to delimite factors when one of the factors is of type numeric.

Just for my interest: Is there a reason or a rule for that?

Download Missing_operation.mw

I am looking to do some gravitational perturbations around a generic background spacetime. But before doing that, I wanted to look at just linearized gravity, and make sure all the standard calculations work with Physics before throwing something a little more complicated at it. I went to ?Physics,Library and found the Linearize command, and I thought this was great! When I was reading through it however, I found that the sign infront of the perturbation h in the inverse metric is incorrect. Now, this does not give any invalid results for the Ricci tensor as displayed in the worksheet, since we are only going to linear order, but if we want to go beyond linear order, this will start to cause issues. 

Is there a way that Maple can handle this? Or do I have to do some sort of double Define for the metric: one with all downstairs indices, and one with all upstairs indices? If so, how do I do that? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the Physics:-Library(Linearize) Worksheet/Example with some comments

Download LinearizedWorksheet-Comments.mw

Download LinearQuestion.mw

I am trying to use the Perm command in the GroupTheory package to create permutations. The problem is when the permutation has fixed points. For example, neither of the forms

[[1,4,7],[2,8,5],[3],[6]]

[[1,4,7],[2,8,5],[3,3],[6,6]]

will work. Any suggestions?