Archive for the ‘Cool Videos’ Category

What is “The AlloSphere” ?

Watch the 7-minute TED video to see.  What you all might be interested in is what they do with the Allosphere.

Ann Kuchera-Morin: We map complex mathematical algorithms that unfold in time and space visually and sonically. Our scientist colleagues are finding new patterns in the information and our engineering colleagues are making one of the largest dynamically varying computers in the world for this kind of data exploration.

This reminded me of the city of Auroville , which I visited in India.  Both involve large spheres.  Both involve a strange collection of collaborators.  Only the AlloSphere is lot more high tech and focused on science instead of the human spirit.

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These claymation videos (posted over on Division by Zero) by Dave Richeson are absolutely fantastic!

First, Tying the Knot.

Second, Through one hole or two?

Whether you teach topology or not, you (and your students) should be able to appreciate these demonstrations. I hope there will be more coming!

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That’s really all I have to say. I don’t know what it has to do with math (although I’m beginning to imagine the possibilities), but right now, this just blows my mind!

It’s called “Augmented Reality” and it was built as part of a GE project about SmartGrid technologies. The SmartGrid website by itself is amazing, but this Augmented Reality just takes the cake.

Here’s the video I recorded right from my webcam LIVE.

I think I even found the sun (or the Jing icon) in there!

Do you have any idea how fast the future is coming now?

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I found this one while wandering about on YouTube.  The last “trick” would be a fantastic puzzle for a Trigonometry course.

Murderous Math Tricks

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I saw this one on TV in one of my many hotels in the past few weeks, but forgot to look it up on the Internet.  Luckily, someone else thought to do the exact same thing!  Thanks to Michael over at God Plays Dice for the YouTube link.

Math Commercial (really, an IBM commercial)

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At the UMD faculty workshop, one of the participants had an idea for using an Animoto video.  She suggested it might be a good way to break up a long lecture time.  This got me thinking about short lessons (like the CommonCraft videos).  Just because the video is short, it doesn’t mean it’s not effective.

I thought I would try out a short video of my own using Animoto.  This one is called “What is function notation?”  If the video doesn’t load for you, go directly to the site here or see the YouTube rendition here.  Either video can be embedded if you’d like to use them in a course shell.

You might be interested in the process I used to build this.  For Animoto, you need a file folder with image files.  First, I created a deck of 75 PowerPoint slides (those being relatively easy to edit).  Then I printed from PowerPoint to SnagIt (because of a special SnagIt save option). Then I saved the SnagIt file as jpg files, where each slide is saved as an individual image file. This gave me a folder of all the slides, but with each slide saved as an image.

I then uploaded the 75 images into Animoto and made sure they were in the proper order (for some reason the last slide fell first and had to be moved back to the last position). You choose the slides you want to “focus” on – places where the reader may need an extra second to think or read. Choose some music (preferably without words), and finally, choose the speed. I tried it at regular speed first (no way), but settled on 1/2 speed as a good speed to show the slides.

I don’t have any student guinea pigs at the moment, so someone play it for your students and let me know what they think! I was toying with the idea of explaining a theorem next.

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CommonCraft has three new videos about math (well, technically financial math). I wonder if they’ll tackle the Gaussian Copula Function next?

Saving Money in Plain English

Investing Money in Plain English

Borrowing Money in Plain English

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“We’re on the cusp of this new generation of tools for interacting with digital media that are going to bring information into our world on our terms.” – David Merrill

Jump to 2:20 to see the math example of a Fibonacci sequence in this TED Talk called Siftables.

On a side note, I’ve been grabbing video from the Internet using a little program called Miro which acts kind of like Tivo for the Internet – check it out!

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Just for the record, I didn’t watch this movie – it was my husband.

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This is something I found on the y of x Blog. Seems like a good way to start that unit on Fractoring.

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