Project Mathematics!
| Project Mathematics! | |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Project MATHEMATICS! |
| Genre | Educational |
| Created by | Dr. Tom M. Apostol |
| Written by | Benedict Freedman |
| Directed by | Dr. Tom M. Apostol |
| Narrated by | Al Hibbs Susan Gray Davis |
| Country of origin | USA |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 9 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Dr. Tom M. Apostol |
| Location(s) | Pasadena, California, USA |
| Editor(s) | Robert Lattanzio |
| Running time | 19–30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | California Institute of Technology |
| Distributor | California Institute of Technology |
| Release | |
| Original network | PBS, NASA TV |
| Picture format | NTSC |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | 1988 – 2000 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | The Mechanical Universe |
| External links | |
| Project MATHEMATICS! | |
Project Mathematics! (stylized as Project MATHEMATICS!), is a series of educational video modules and accompanying workbooks for teachers, developed to help teach the principles of mathematics to high school students.
The Project Mathematics! series of videos is a teaching aid for teachers to help students understand the basics of geometry and trigonometry. The series was developed by Dr. Tom M. Apostol and Dr. James F. Blinn, both from the California Institute of Technology. Apostol heads the production of the series while Blinn provides the computer animation used to depict the ideas beings discussed. Blinn mentioned that part of his inspiration was the Bell science series of films from the 1950s.
The material is designed for teachers to use in their curriculums and is aimed at grades 8 through 13. Workbooks are also available to accompany the videos and help assist teachers in presenting the material to their students. The videos are distributed as either 9 VHS videotapes or 3 DVDs and include a history of mathematics and examples of how math is used in real world applications.
A total of nine educational video modules were created between 1988 and 2000. Another two modules, Teachers Workshop and Project MATHEMATICS! Contest, were created in 1991 for teachers and are only available on videotape. The content of the nine educational modules follows below.
In 1988, The Theorem of Pythagoras was the first video produced by the series and reviews the Pythagorean theorem. For all right triangles, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides ( a2 + b2 = c2 ). The theorem is named after Pythagoras of ancient Greece. Pythagorean triples occur when all three sides of a right triangle are integers such as a = 3, b = 4 and c = 5. A clay tablet shows that the Babylonians knew of Pythagorean triples 1200 years before Pythagoras, but nobody knows if they knew the Pythagorean theorem. The Chinese proof uses four similar triangles to prove the theorem. Today, we know of the Pythagorean theorem because of Euclid's Elements, a set of 13 books on mathematics—from around 300 BC—and the knowledge it contained has been used for more than 2000 years. Euclid's proof is described in book 1, proposition 47 and uses the idea of equal areas along with shearing and rotating triangles. In the dissection proof, the square of the hypotenuse is cut into pieces to fit into the other two squares. Proposition 31 in book 6 of Euclid's Elements describes the similarity proof, which states that the squares of each side can be replaced by shapes that are similar to each other and the proof still works.
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