Teachers: Do you ever find yourself with a little time on your hands and nothing planned? There are zillions of videos out there these days - many are awful and many are wonderful. If you have a short space in the day, you can treat your students to something fun and thought-provoking. Here are some videos I like, with running times, to keep up your sleeve for just the right moment.
Eratosthenes (2:16)
This guy figured out the size of the earth a very long time ago in an elegant way using his knowledge of geometry.
Richard Tapia (2:21)
The kid loved race cars and became a mathematician.
Frostie Dancing to Shake a Tail Feather (2:43)
What can I say? It’s a surefire mood improver.
OK Go, This Too Shall Pass (3:54)
A band makes a music video ala Rube Goldberg. A TV smashes, people are shot with paint.
Doodling in Math Class: Infinity Elephants (4:36)
Makes you want to grab a pencil and start drawing fractals.
Artist of the Floating World (4:47)
An artist creates a giant pair of floating dice and sets them adrift in the ocean.
Brooklyn’s Rube Goldberg (5:34)
A real page turner.
It is always good to hear about female mathematicians. Today, Google featured a graphic with the tag “Ada Lovelace’s 197th birthday”. Investigation revealed that Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the poet, Lord Byron, and lived in the 1800s.
A paragraph in the Washington Post caught my attention.
At the age of 17, Lovelace was among the first to grasp the importance of Babbage’s machines, Google noted. In her correspondence, as reported by New Scientist magazine, Lovelace said that “the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.” She also noted that the Analytical Engine “does not occupy common ground with mere calculating machines” and had the potential to run complicated programs of its own.
Apparently, Lovelace wrote the first algorithm designed to be run by the Analytical Engine. Some say she should be considered the first computer programmer.
Here is another Lovelace quote to ponder (from Wikipedia:Ada Lovelace)
[The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...
Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.[58]
Joe
Garofalo, C.P. Smith music teacher and captain in the Lyric Theater’s
recent production of Titanic, kindly shares his room with me. Often,
before the students arrive in the morning, we find ourselves discussing
the math-music connection and how we might help bring this to life for
students. Last week, Joe showed me some animated music he’d discovered. I
had a hard time tearing myself away. See for yourself. Here is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by a company called Musanim. Musanim says it will send a free DVD of these videos to public libraries and schools. We’ve got ours on order.
