Mathematical Doodling

[Lucas Garron]

I met a bunch of really cool people at Gathering for Gardner ("bunch" is an understatement, but whatever).

One of them, Vi Hart, has been creating rather amusing videos about math-related doodling. Even if you know the math behind them, they're still fun to watch. And if you don't, this would be a nice introduction to pique your curiosity.

 

[buelercuber]

THIS IS ****ING WIKED@@@!!! ONEONE!!!1111

pardon my language, but i love math games!

 

[BigSams]

zomg LG changed his avatar. Don't love cubing anymore?
This stuff's cool, especially the star polygon video. The drawings are so nice and accurate and artsy. My geometry diagrams are always so messy.
Btw, here is a combinatorial geometry problem related to polygons that really impressed me a while back - for anyone into creative problems:
If you draw a convex n-gon and connect every pair of vertices using line segments, what is the maximum number of intersections of such line segments, in terms of n, INSIDE of the polygon?

 

[Chrish]

I enjoyed those.

 

[LearningCode]

That was freakin' awesome!
I am amused AND interested in math now <.<

 

[some1rational]

haha this is really great, the comments about the ineffectiveness of the common middle/high school math classes are a nice touch and provide just the right amount of hilarity while not straying away from the material presented.

+subscribed

 

[rjohnson_8ball]

I like her "Snakes on a Plane" video. Years ago, I had a method of interlocking many paper loops such that if any one of them was cut, all remaining loops would become disconnected. (I think I did up to 10 loops. It looked like a ball, the way they interlocked.

 

[y3k9]

I agree with him, I like math, but the stupid curriculum doesn't allow for much learning but for A LOT of relearning the same thing, and stuff.

 

[AndyK]

She is awesome, people should know math can be fun like that.

 

[y3k9]

Oh and something interesting and somewhat related here's something funny I was shown: Say you have a right triangle. One leg measures i units, and the other 1 unit. If you use the pythagorean theorem you will quickly see that the hypotenuse measures 0.

 

[~Adam~]

Oh and something interesting and somewhat related here's something funny I was shown: Say you have a right triangle. One leg measures i units, and the other 1 unit. If you use the pythagorean theorem you will quickly see that the hypotenuse measures 0.

So it's not √(i^2 + 1)?
What does leg mean?
I assumed you were referring to the opp and adj sides.

 

[y3k9]

So it's not √(i^2 + 1)?
What does leg mean?
I assumed you were referring to the opp and adj sides.

Well, i^2 is -1, 1^2 is 1, add those two together you get 0. The sqrt of 0 is 0, so yeah. And that's exactly what leg means, I use that term because it's very common.

 

[Hiero]

Here is a Sierpinski Gasket I did over the summer. I teach my students to make one using the real numbers and give it as homework. We also look at related patterns like the Fibonacci and also do Golden Spirals and Pythagorean Spirals. The best looking drawings are the scale drawings though

Sierpinsi's Gasket


Scale Drawings

 

[Toad]

Wow. That was a fabulous 20 minutes.

 

[y3k9]

Here is a Sierpinski Gasket I did over the summer. I teach my students to make one using the real numbers and give it as homework. We also look at related patterns like the Fibonacci and also do Golden Spirals and Pythagorean Spirals. The best looking drawings are the scale drawings though

What class do you teach?

 

[Hiero]

What class do you teach?

Ok, pics should work now. I teach 6th grade math. I should also add some mandalas in there, along with tessellations, and different types of yin-yangs.

 

[y3k9]

This person should do a video on polar graphing (on a calculator). It's quite fun to play with actually.

 

[BigSams]

This person should do a video on polar graphing (on a calculator). It's quite fun to play with actually.

Yeah I love playing around with polar equations on my ipod graphing calculator. Lovely spirals and petals and such.

 

[y3k9]

Yeah I love playing around with polar equations on my ipod graphing calculator. Lovely spirals and petals and such.

10sin(cos(tan(<theta> is pretty sexy.

 

[hatter]

This is pretty awesome!