Check out "Hunting the Hidden Dimension", with a basic explanation of fractals, the Mandelbrot set, and a large collection of applications (blood vessels! forest health! textiles! eyeballs! heartbeats!). The website has neat stuff now, and you can watch the whole thing online starting Wednesday, October 29.
I love Nova. Especially Nova episodes about math. I show "The Proof", about Andrew Wiles' quest to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, to my classes when we have a down day. It gives them a taste of what professional mathematicians actually do all day. Also when they complain that a problem takes too long, I can remind them that Wiles kept at the same problem for seven years.
2 comments:
I love "The Proof", mainly because it has John Conway in it. I LOOOOVE John Conway.
I sent an email out to a few students about the fractal NOVA and I had a student come back so excited. He wants us to study it in class. Although I remain skeptical about the super-importance of fractals for math, physics, and the world, anything that can get a student all excited gets a thumbs up from me.
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