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Where Geometry Came From and How it Changed the World

Audience:

Tags: geometryhistory

Our entry is a miniature documentary exploring the ideas of Greek geometry, all the way from their roots in Ancient Egypt to their influence on scientific and philosophical thinking to this day. Specifically, it covers how Greek geometry got its start in Ancient Egyptian land surveying, how the first Greek mathematician, Thales, brought these ideas to the Greek world, and how later Greek mathematicians invented the idea of the mathematical proof. The aim of the video is to get middle school to high school kids interested in Greek geometry by introducing it through the intriguing real-world examples that may have inspired the Greeks themselves. We also take care to highlight several of the ingenious, elegant solutions the Greeks employed that make mathematicians like me excited about math to this day. In the end, the hope is that viewers will walk away with a better appreciation for what mathematical proofs are for, and why they’re so important and mind-boggling. Along the way, students will hopefully also gain an appreciation for what excites mathematicians about math—not the calculations and formulas, but the endless sequence of joyfully clever ideas that open the mind to how much can be accomplished with so little if some genius is applied.

Analytics

7 Overall score*

24 Rank

13 Votes

11 Comments

Comments

Doing Ropestretchers techniques and Thales measurement of the pyramids in real life made the subject very tangible. Your motivation for Euclids Axioms also seemed very natural. However as you said the video is quite long so dividing it into two separate videos may be advantageous.

Good one, but a long to watch

4.1

Very good video, but I dont think this one is for middle or high schoolers

Very interesting introduction, nice historical survey. If you wanted to use it in school, it probably has to be broken down into pieces.

8.9

I loved the real world examples, using the ropes in person, actually going out and demoing how to measure a shadow. Which was sort of serendipitous as I just was reading about this method in the book Love Triangle: The Life-changing Magic of Trigonometry Book by Matt Parke. This made those concepts in the book way easier to understand.

It’s a long video and starts out slowly, reviewing very basic geometry, but then picks up with some entertaining live video footage of rope-stretching and measuring the shadow of the Washington Monument. These make geometry very concrete. So nice work! I found myself asking “Who is the target audience?” If this is aimed at high school students? It does cite a lot of history so it’s not for the very young. My recommendations are 1) button your shirt to look a little more professional, 2) loose the Barbie doll and stuffed toys, and 3) blink more often - I felt like you were staring at me. Also, saying Euclid’s Elements “spread like the plague” is too negative.

This video is too long for a student; it is structured like a documentary on the history of geometry. Personally, I appreciated it, but I could only recommend it to an elite group of students, which would be very selective.

5.7

This is very lovely presented with great visual presentation. My only concern is that the video is too long, and I dont think there would be many people who will watch this video until the end.

The experiments were very engaging. The practicality of ancient geometry shown in real life was pretty magical.

8.8

This was really amazing. Your team obviously put in a lot of work into this video! I like how you did not try to “make geometry useful” in the way that some textbooks do — we all know that we’re not really going to be constructing equilateral triangles in our daily life. Instead you highlighted the method and impetus behind studying geometry. I actually teach some of Euclid’s Elements to my high school students (only Books 1 and 3), so it was really cool for me to learn about the background, and WHY the straightedge and compass; I will definitely be able to pass this on to my students. I also realllllly loved your reenactment of Thales’ pyramid measuring with the Washington monument. After watching it, I immediately emailed the video to my coworker (another math teacher) because we had literally just been talking about Thales and the pyramid that day! We work in DC, and now we’re thinking about doing a little math field trip and following in your footsteps. ANYWAYS, as you can tell, I thought this was incredible, and would definitely help to both inspire wonder and an appreciation of mathematics in a student as well as pass on a deeper understanding of geometry and its foundations. The only thing is that it took me like 4 days of watching snatches of the video when I could to finish it, but as you said at the end, I don’t know what you would take out to make it shorter. The timestamp markers are very helpful. I work at a school with a very strict policy on watching videos (as in, we don’t really do it), but this is a video that I would feel very comfortable sending my students or watching snippets of in class, or at least use as a guideline for one of my lessons. Thank you for all of your hard work!

Very detailed but very lengthy. I can see how passionate he is in explaining things. Great video overall.