Mathmatics Videos
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Multi-Nombre, or Multiple Numbers (loosely translated from our made up English-Spanish mixed word), is just that - a myriad of numbers streamlining their way across your screen. Red, white and metallic looking numbers combine in an array of motions to provide a truly unique looking animation. Perfect for mathmatics training presentations or videos or anywhere else you could use a whole lot of numbers in once place! http://www.dvdmenubacks.com

Vibrating Pinscreen Portrait Mosaiced into the pinfield is a photographic portrait of the Exploratorium's founder Frank Oppenheimer. The pins comprising the portrait are one inch in length and are surrounded by pins five eighths of an inch in length that predominate the thirty square inch field. Being of greater mass the one-inch pins lag behind their shorter neighbors when excited at any given frequency. The light reflected off the longer pins' polished heads lags in reaching the viewer, thus revealing the pertinent information. A second condition that makes the revelation possible is that the longer pins comprising the portrait are arranged in specifically calibrated clusters that correspond to relative amounts of light and shade in the photo portrait. This directly translates to there being one more long pin per cluster for each of the ascending steps in the eight step greyscale, where, for example, eight long pins congregate around the center of a gride square, corresponding to the lightest value possible in the portrait. The above is a description of a masking technique which allows the introduction of photographic imagery into the excitable medium of the pinscreen. The description delineates an extended use of what is inventor, Bob Miller, refers to as a pinhole portrait. Bob's original intended use of the device was for masking sun rays and producing calibrated photonic impressions. He freely made its use available to me for this experiment. Many thanks and fond remembrance. The field of pins is 30" square. Each pin hangs by its head in a hold through a thin steel plate. The hole is over-sized, allowing the pin to freely swing and rotate. The entire pinfield is being driven by a powerful variable speed, variable force vibrator. The emergent patterns resemble those produced by the simple rules governing wave propagation in cellular automata. Devised in the 1960s by mathematicians John von Neumann and Stanislaw Vlam who were interested in modeling self-reproducing entities, each pin can exist in one of three states: receptive (meaning that it is liable to become excited); excited and refractory (which means that it is recovering from a period of excitation). When in an excited state, the pins deliver a stimulus to those around it. If any receptive cell receives a sufficiently large stimulus from its neighbors it too becomes excited. But, once excited, a cell eventually enters the refractory state, during which time it remains unresponsive to stimuli regardless of what its neighbors are doing. Thus the vibrated pinfield, being an excitable medium, its complicated behavior as a whole depends on the simple interactions between neighboring pins giving rise to the traveling spiral and target patterns occurring when excitations are initiated at a few points - the wavefronts annihilating each other in just the same way as they do in the models of cellular automata. I am astonished that from these few basic rules such complex and gorgeous phenomena arise. Does life in all its bewildering complexity arise from such simple rules? If so, what a deep implication! View Video Fullscreen / Download Flash Player View Vibrating Pinscreen Video Vibrating Pinscreen View Atomic Model Video Atomic Model View Atomic Model Close-up Atomic Model Close-up View Pinscreen Demonstration Video Pinscreen Demonstration View Atomic Model with Pointer Video Atomic Model with Pointer Author: WardFleming1 Keywords: Mathmatics Art Education Ward Fleming Added: March 10, 2008

The Atomic Model The model illustrates the structure of metals on an atomic scale and serves as a visual metaphor for interactions of many kinds. The detail and the dynamism of this display are purely poetic for me; one, in that its motion is so intriguing and two, in the level of thought it provokes. This model is a perfect jumping off point for lessons in crystal formation and could be accompanied by text and photographs illustrating similar patterns found in nature such as ice forming on the surface of lakes, bubbles arrayed on the surface of water, etched cross-sections of meteorites, snowflakes under a microscope, etc. As a life metaphor, the model is kept from equilibrium by the steady input of vibration just as the energy input from the sun keeps the systems of life on earth out of equilibrium. The model is an example of a gradient reduction system, as the gradient steepens equalization occurs at the grain boundaries and through the ceaseless cracking and rending of the lattice as a whole as long as the vibration persists. A second level of viewer interaction is achieved via the manipulation of a probe inserted into the gap between the layers of glass and on into the two-dimensional aggregate of vibrating spheres providing another method for dislocating the lattice. As the viewer pushes the probe into the ball mass the pointed tip causes multiple fractures and tearing in the matrix. A similar phenomenon is observed when driving the prow of a boat into a thin skim of pond ice and seeing it part and fracture. The Atomic model contains 45,000 black acrylic spheres one eighth of an inch in diameter that stack vertically in the void between two sheets of plate glass 30 inches square comprise this two- dimensional atomic model. The assembly rests upon an isolating shock mount and is driven by a variable speed vibrating electric motor controlled by the viewer. The vibration provides a uniform dislocating influence causing the ordered domains of closely packed spheres to persist and migrate throughout the plane. Regions of order form and tolerate a few internal local anomalies but conflict on a larger scale to produce linear boundaries of connected disorder. As many crystals start to grow in the same region, sooner or later they will interfere with each other. Neighboring crystals differing in no other way save in the direction of their atom rows in space cannot join without some imperfection. Nature abhors a vacuum, practicing imperfection and approximation. Author: WardFleming1 Keywords: Mathmatics Art Education Ward Fleming Added: March 10, 2008

Computers are terrific at arithmetic, but students at all levels need help to develop the required skills. Some of our kids aren't learning the math they'll need for a successful career through their own lack of diligence or effort. But far more are being failed by professionals that are paid to know better