Thursday, March 14, 2013

Vi Hart


Vi Hart is a self-described recreational mathemusician and a serial creator of wonderful things. She has a blog here, but it was her videos that won my heart. Since the American style of rendering dates matches March 14 with the first three digits of pi, let's start with a few videos about pi:


Lest you think Ms. Hart has no love at all for pi, this should rehabilitate your view:


There's much more than circles to math, of course, although it's hard to escape the topological significance of curvy things no matter how many dimensions your candy has. If that last sentence made no sense, this video might help. Or not:


That last video was tagged in my mind as "a place where something really cool happens," but I'd forgotten the result of the Mobius strip trisection until just now. Good golly, topology is a most beautiful kind of insanity. Some of Hart's videos also touch on science, like this one about the perception of sound:


Lastly there's this one that has no particular mathematical significance but is seriously one of the greatest things I've ever seen on youtube:


There seems to be a pattern of interesting math majors coming into my life and significantly changing the way I perceive reality. Vi Hart has actually done this the least of the three that come most readily to mind, but I could still watch her videos all day.

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