In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy.

In 1995, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci­ence fic­tion writer most well known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, pre­sent­ed a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary on the 1980 dis­cov­ery of the Man­del­brot Set (M‑Set). Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty brings us inside the world of frac­tal geom­e­try, and soon enough we’re encoun­ter­ing what has been called “the thumbprint of God.” Clarke nar­rates the film, which has a 54 minute run­time. David Gilmour (gui­tarist, vocal­ist and song­writer for Pink Floyd) cre­at­ed the sound­track. Big hat tip to Greg for send­ing along…

Note: You can pur­chase online the DVD of the doc­u­men­tary, along with the orig­i­nal book on which it was based.

Heights, I hate them. But Skip Garibal­di, a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, does­n’t mind them much, and here he describes how math fig­ures into his pas­sion for rock climb­ing – how it makes the dif­fer­ence between a safe climb and a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous one. Includes a quick trip to El Cap­i­tan, a 3000 foot ver­ti­cal climb in Yosemite Nation­al Park…

In this 90-minute BBC doc­u­men­tary, Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge, David Mal­one takes a close look at four math­e­mati­cians — Georg Can­tor, Lud­wig Boltz­mann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Tur­ing – whose think­ing pro­found­ly influ­enced mod­ern math­e­mat­ics but also drove them (or so the pro­gram argues) to insan­i­ty and even­tu­al­ly sui­cide. Can­tor gave us “set the­o­ry.” Boltz­mann made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions in the fields of sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and sta­tis­ti­cal ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Gödel is remem­bered for his incom­plete­ness the­o­rems. Tur­ing built on Gödel’s work and laid the foun­da­tion for com­put­er sci­ence. They all spent their dif­fi­cult final years in var­i­ous states of men­tal decline.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

If math went over your head in high school or col­lege, here’s a great way to redis­cov­er what you missed. In late Jan­u­ary, Steven Stro­gatz, a pro­fes­sor of Applied Math­e­mat­ics at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, began blog­ging math­e­mat­ics for The New York Times. And his whole goal is to show you, the read­er, the joy of math. Or, as he describes his mis­sion:

I’ll be writ­ing about the ele­ments of math­e­mat­ics, from pre-school to grad school, for any­one out there who’d like to have a sec­ond chance at the sub­ject — but this time from an adult per­spec­tive. It’s not intend­ed to be reme­di­al. The goal is to give you a bet­ter feel­ing for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

Start­ing this week, this blog will be delv­ing into the great ideas at the heart of cal­cu­lus. You can jump on board right here. Thanks to Gregg for the heads up on this one.