NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation
Exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In “Einstein’s Big Idea,” NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation.
E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof … Ler mais
The story of a wandering mathematician obsessed with unsolved problems
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. — Sir Isaac Newton
A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in … Ler mais
Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature
You may not know it, but fractals, like the air you breathe, are all around you. Their irregular, repeating shapes are found in cloud formations and tree limbs, in stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, even in the rhythm of the human heart. In this film, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of maverick mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry.
For centuries, fractal-like irregular shapes were considered beyond the boundaries … Ler mais
At 2pm on October 29th, 1998, at Christie’s auction house in New York, a very special old book was sold to an anonymous collector for $2,000,000
At 2pm on October 29th, 1998, at Christie’s auction house in New York, a very special old book was sold to an anonymous collector for $2,000,000. This collector deposited the manuscript at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in order to conserve it, image it, and study it.
The book is special because it contains seven treatises by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. Two of these treatises, The Stomachion and The Method exist nowhere else in the world. This … Ler mais
A battered manuscript turns up after 1.000 years, revealing the mind of the great genius Archimedes
Twenty-two centuries after Archimedes wrote his most revealing mathematical work, and eight centuries after a Christian monk erased what may have been the last surviving copy, the lost treatise has turned up and is being deciphered in a Baltimore museum. “Infinite Secrets” reports the story of the manuscript’s amazing discovery and how modern technology is being used to read its startling contents.
Archimedes is famous for shouting “Eureka!” (Greek for “I have found it!”) on stepping into his … Ler mais
