The students have shared their course work so that you can see the steps and iterations that led to the creation of their final projects.
Link to Andrea Desrosiers’ page on Tumblr
This video is courtesy of Andrea Desrosiers on Tumblr and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Cue music that is catchy and upbeat.
Zoom in on drawing of a young girl with braces on, looking a bit awkward.
Cut to Andrea with same expression on face.
Andrea: Few things strike more dread than hearing you have to get braces! Whether it’s worrying about how much it will hurt, what happens if a wire pops out, how you’re going to talk, or how much your friends will make fun of you, it’s kind of an awkward experience. So why even get braces…
Cut to pictures of famous stars who have had braces with voiceover.
Andrea: Studies have shown that having a beautiful smile with even, white teeth conveys health and youth, and makes people like you more.
Cut back to smiling Andrea…
Andrea: So what exactly is happening inside your mouth while the braces are on?
Cut to video of model teeth moving from crooked to straight.
Voiceover: The brackets and wires in your mouth are designed to push and pull on your teeth to get them into the right alignment. You can see this movement happening, often within the first couple of days after you get your braces on.
Cut to Andrea
Andrea: But while you can see the results just by looking in a mirror, what is happening inside your jaw is just as exciting. Your jawbone is literally being dissolved and reformed around your teeth. So how does that happen?
Cut to image of tooth bone structure.
Andrea: Each one of your teeth sits in a little pocket in your gums. Your gums cover your jawbone, which has a hole where this pocket sits. The roots of your tooth project into this hole to act like an anchor to secure your teeth in the jawbone. But your tooth doesn’t actually come into direct contact with the jawbone - that would be painful every time you bit down to chew.
Cut to animation of biting down with tooth contacting bone, and “Ouch”.
Cut back to image of tooth bone structure with periodontal ligament highlighted. Maybe have a tooth with a happy smile sitting on a cushion.
Voiceover: Instead the tooth under the gum line is surrounded by the periodontal ligament, which acts as a kind of cushion. The PDL as it’s called allows your teeth to move around a little bit as you chew on things. So what happens when your braces need to move that tooth.
Animation: Tooth looks a little alarmed as a bracket is put on, and then says “whoa” when a lasso pulls it in one direction. The cushion is squeezed in one direction and stretched in the opposite direction.
Voiceover: As the tooth moves in its pocket, the PDL is squeezed in one direction and stretched in the other. This is what causes the pain you feel right after an adjustment.
Cut to Andrea, holding hand to jaw and looking unhappy.
Andrea: Your PDL’s job is the keep your tooth cushioned. The part of the PDL that is being squeezed against the bone needs to create more space in your jaw, so it can feel comfortable again.
Cut to animation of tooth structure.
Voiceover: So what actually needs to happen is that a little part of your jaw needs to be dissolved so the PDL can feel like that nice fat cushion. The body contains cells called osteoclasts that come in and literally dissolve a little bit of the bone. This takes about 2–5 days. (maybe show animation)
Vioceover: But what happens to the part of the PDL cushion that got stretched?
Cut to animation of tooth structure with PDL stretching a looking like it may break.
Voiceover: Another kind of cell called an osteoblast comes in a builds up the jawbone, so the PDL cushion can get back into its proper shape. As the bone is built up, this is what holds your tooth in its new position. This process takes about 15–30 days.
Cut to Andrea walking around in an ortho office.
Andrea: Once that has happened, it’s time to go back in for another adjustment, and starts the process all over again.
Andrea looks rueful.
Cut to image of entire body with skeleton highlighted.
Voiceover: Your jaw isn’t the only place where these osteoclasts and osteoblasts alter your bone structure. In fact, this process is happening all the time as all of your bones grow.
Cut to Andrea walking around.
Andrea: (need closing statements…)
Day 3 - Andrea’s Trailer Take 2
This video is courtesy of Andrea Desrosiers on Tumblr and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Andrea bites into an apple
Mmmm, delicious!
Eating foods is one of the great pleasures of life. And to enjoy foods like apples, carrots, or almonds, or even snack foods like a chocolate bar, or tortilla chips, we rely on one part of our bodies to repeatedly withstand as forces as high as 225 pounds: Our teeth. That’s like having a mountain goat jump up and down on our teeth (sill - show).
Teeth are the hardest exposed substance in our bodies - even harder than our bones! On the Mohs scale, which rates minerals in terms of hardness, with talc at the low end and diamonds at the top, Human teeth rate 5 on a scale of 10. That’s harder than iron or steel!
Each one of your teeth sits in a little pocket in your gums. Your gums cover your jawbone, which has a hole where this pocket sits. The roots of your tooth project into this hole to act like an anchor to secure your teeth in the jawbone. But your tooth doesn’t actually come into direct contact with the jawbone - that would be painful every time you bit down to chew.
As you chew food, your teeth actually move a little bit, but why don’t they actually fall out? It turns out they are anchored in the jawbone by a piece of specialized tissue called the periodontal ligament, or PDL. The PDL acts as a kind of cushion between the jawbone and the tooth. The PDL can easily absorb the normal forces that a tooth experiences when we chew, say, an apple.
Inside the PDL, there are all kinds of specialized types of cells. One type, called mechanoreceptors, sense forces of movement or pressure applied to the tooth. If the force is large enough, such as biting into a hard shell, these receptors tell your brain - hey stop biting down!
But sometimes, we need to apply large forces to the tooth to get them to move, like when you have braces. What does the PDL do then?
As the tooth moves in its pocket, the PDL is squeezed in one direction and stretched in the other. Your PDL’s job is the keep your tooth cushioned. The part of the PDL that is being squeezed against the bone needs to create more space in your jaw, so it can feel comfortable again.
So what actually needs to happen is that a little part of your jaw needs to be dissolved away so the PDL can feel like that nice fat cushion. The body contains cells called osteoclasts that come in and literally dissolve a little bit of the bone. This takes about 2–5 days.
But what happens to the part of the PDL cushion that got stretched?
Another kind of cell called an osteoblast comes in a builds up the jawbone, so the PDL cushion can get back into its proper shape. As the bone is built up, this is what holds your tooth in its new position. This process takes about 15–30 days.
Once that has happened, it’s time to go back in for another adjustment, and starts the process all over again.
Cut to image of entire body with skeleton highlighted.
Voiceover: Your jaw isn’t the only place where these osteoclasts and osteoblasts alter your bone structure. In fact, this process of bony remodeling is happening throughout your body.
Engineers from MIT are taking advantage of the properties of osteoblasts to come up with a new compound that is composed of layers of materials that help promote rapid bone growth and will allow the body’s own cells to produce bone that fixes the implant in place. (need to rework this) (Engineered Coating for Implants Reduces the Risk of Complications.)
(Long shot of Andrea walking around farmer’s market) Eating foods is one of the great pleasures of life. And to enjoy foods from
(Panning shot of energy bar aisle at Harvest) VO: energy bars
(Panning shot of Flour bakery display.) VO: to cookies,
(Panning shot of Andrea walking in produce aisle.) to fruits and vegetables, we rely on one part of our bodies:
(Andrea picks up and apple from produce aisle.) “our teeth.” (Close up on Andrea eating up an apple in quick video)
(Andrea filmed indoors, medium shot, holding a model tooth in hand.) Teeth are the hardest substance in our bodies - harder than our bones, and even harder than iron or steel!
(Andrea lifts tooth to shoulder height.) While we chew, our teeth actually experience forces up to 225 pounds - that’s like having a
(Drawing of mountain goat appears above tooth.) mountain goat
jump up and down on our teeth hundreds of times each day…
(Animate mountain goat jumping up and down 3 times.)
(Cut to closeup of Andrea.)
so why doesn’t our jaw just crumble under all those forces? (Drawing overlay outlining Andrea’s jaw all cracked and jagged.)
(Show drawing) VO: Between your tooth and your jawbone, there is a specialized piece of tissue called the periodontal ligament, or PDL for short. The PDL can easily absorb the normal forces that a tooth experiences when we chew, say, an apple, cushioning or protecting our jawbone from our teeth.
(Show b-roll of cells maybe) VO: And inside the PDL, there are all kinds of cells. One type, called mechanoreceptors, sense forces of movement or pressure applied to the tooth. If the force is large enough, such as biting into an apple seed, these receptors tell your brain to stop biting down!
(Display model of perfect teeth.) Teeth sound like they’re perfectly designed already…
(Closeup of Andrea with bubba teeth.) VO: But sometimes we really Need to force them in a certain direction… like with braces. (Cut to Andrea smiling with braces in.)
(Cut to drawing.) VO: As the braces slowly force the teeth to move, the PDL is squeezed in one direction and stretched in the other, like a rubber band.
Here’s where it gets interesting - to make room, the mechanoreceptors in the PDL trigger cells called osteoclasts to come in and dissolve a little bit of the jawbone.
(Cut to drawing) VO: The mechanoreceptors also trigger another kind of cell called an osteoblast, which builds the jawbone back up, so the PDL cushion can get back into its proper shape, holding the tooth in its new position.
So if braces use osteoblasts to physically Reposition teeth for cosmetic reasons, what if we try to use them to Replace things to our bodies.
Dental implants replace teeth that are damaged or missing - to restore chewing function. And MIT engineers are using the properties of osteoblasts and osteoclasts that are already in our bodies to create a chemical coating for these implants. Just like in a mouth with braces, this coating helps create natural bone to help lock the implant in place.
Cut to image of entire body with skeleton highlighted.
Voiceover: Your jaw isn’t the only place where these osteoclasts and osteoblasts alter your bone structure. In fact, this bony remodeling process is happening throughout your body.
So what if we replace things Inside our bodies, combining natural cells and tissues with synthetic parts, like a cyborg!
Sound like something out of science fiction? Well, it’s already happening. And these synthetic implants aren’t just limited to teeth—doctors can replace knees, hips, even spinal discs.
Right now, these implants are designed to have the same functionality as the body parts they are replacing. But in the future, scientists could make implants that work better than the original body parts.
Then we could become true cyborg - with implanted parts that fuse with the natural parts of our bodies to make us faster, stronger.
Smarter.
And once we’ve tasted the forbidden fruit will we still be human?
Locations:
Farmer’s Market at Armory (Sat. 10:00 AM)
Harvest Coop (Thu. 9:00 AM)
Flour Bakery in Central (Thu. 1:00 PM)
Classroom blackboard (Wed. 3:00 PM)
Scene 1
Dialog:
Eating foods is one of the great pleasures of life. And to enjoy foods from… energy bars… to cookies… to fruits and vegetables, we rely on one part of our bodies: our teeth. Don’t forget 10 sec of roomtone.
To Shoot:
Farmer’s market (alternate: Harvest Coop)
Harvest Coop:
Flour Bakery:
Classroom Blackboard:
Wardrobe:
Props:
—————————————————
Locations:
Classroom blackboard (mid-day)
Scene 2 Dialog
Teeth are the hardest substance in our bodies—harder than our bones, and even harder than iron or steel!
While we chew, our teeth actually experience forces up to 225 pounds - that’s like having a mountain goat jump up and down on our teeth hundreds of times each day…
so why doesn’t our jaw just crumble under all those forces?
To Shoot:
Classroom Blackboard
Wardrobe:
Props:
————-
Locations:
Classroom blackboard (mid-day)
Scene 2 Dialog
Teeth are the hardest substance in our bodies – harder than our bones, and even harder than iron or steel!
While we chew, our teeth actually experience forces up to 225 pounds - that’s like having a mountain goat jump up and down on our teeth hundreds of times each day…
so why doesn’t our jaw just crumble under all those forces?
VO:
Between your tooth and your jawbone, there is a specialized piece of tissue called the periodontal ligament, or PDL for short. The PDL can easily absorb the normal forces that a tooth experiences when we chew, say, an apple, cushioning or protecting our jawbone from our teeth.
And inside the PDL, there are all kinds of cells. One type, called mechanoreceptors, sense forces of movement or pressure applied to the tooth. If the force is large enough, such as biting into an apple seed, these receptors tell your brain to stop biting down!
To Shoot:
Classroom Blackboard
Wardrobe:
——————————-
Locations:
Orthodontic operatory (mid-day)
Classroom blackboard (mid-day)
Scene 4 Dialog
But what if we *want* to force teeth in a certain direction… VO: like with braces?
As the braces pull on the tooth, the PDL is squeezed in one direction and stretched in the other, like a rubber band.
Here’s where it gets interesting - to make room, the mechanoreceptors in the PDL trigger cells called osteoclasts to come in and dissolve a little bit of the jawbone.
The mechanoreceptors also trigger another kind of cell called an osteoblast, which builds the jawbone back up, so the PDL cushion can get back into its proper shape, holding the tooth in its new position.
To Shoot:
Classroom Blackboard
Orthodontic Operatory
Wardrobe:
Props:
——————
Locations:
VO
Your jaw isn’t the only place where these osteoclasts and osteoblasts alter your bone structure. In fact, this bony remodeling process is happening throughout your body.
Where braces use bone remodeling to make teeth straighter for mostly cosmetic reasons, dental implants replace teeth that are damaged or missing - to restore chewing function.
This video is courtesy of Andrea Desrosiers on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
This video is courtesy of Andrea Desrosiers on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
CyberMouth
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: Andrea Desrosiers
Written By: Andrea Desrosiers
Additional Scripting: Elizabeth Choe, George Zaidan, Jaime Goldstein, Ceri Riley, George Zaidan, students of IAP15 20.219
Executive Producer: Elizabeth Choe
Director: Andrea Desrosiers
Editors: Andrea Desrosiers, Yuliya Klochan, Nathan Hernandez, Ceri Riley, Elizabeth Choe
Production Assistants: Nathan Hernandez, Fred Yarm
See the full credits on the course Tumblr.
Thanks to: Everyone in IAP15 20.219, the folks at DPI, and especially to my brother John Desrosiers, who inspired my love of science.
Andrea’s video was professionally produced by Science Out Loud after this course finished.
This video is from MITK12Videos on YouTube and is provided under their Creative Commons license.
Link to David Yam Page on Tumblr
Why do some people handle cold better than others? Why is it that some are so fearful of the cold; that they rather die than be caught outside without all the winter gear on, mask an all, while others can wear one layers for a morning jog? What makes all the difference?
(change scene to indoor maybe)
To understand this we first need to find out how our body reacts to the cold:
It seems that that not all bodies are created equal, in terms of maintaining our body temperature. Some people just have more efficient methods of generating the heat through metabolism, much like how some people just never seem to get fat no matter how much they eat. Others have more fat, which acts like another layer to keep the warmth within the body. Genetics seems to have a play in both these areas.
Also, people who are smaller, which translates into having a more surface area compared to volume, lose heat more easily because they have more possible surfaces in contact with the corresponding air currents to lose heat by. (shrinking person / stick figure / comparing a large person to a small person)
Furthermore, body types can have an effect on how one is more able to withstand the cold: “One group of people who can withstand cold really well? The Inuit, who live in freezing temps year round. Indeed, studies have shown that the Inuit tend to have shorter, stockier frames than people who live in other climates so that their bodies can preserve their core temperature better. Shorter limbs mean less areas in the body to which blood has to travel to keep warm.” [1] (cue igloo with cartoonish inuit people)
(Pictures of “Wim Hof”)
Introducing “Wim Hof” from the Netherlands, also nicknamed “Iceman” for his ability to withstand extreme cold conditions by “turning up” his internal thermostat with his “mind”. In 2009, Iceman here was able to complete a full marathon in temperatures close to-20 degrees celcius dressed in nothing but his shorts. In 2011, he spent 1hr 52mins standing fully immersed in ice. Wim Hof practices certain forms of meditation has allowed his body to produce more heat than it would normally do as well as shut down certain proteins to slow heat loss to surroundings.
Whilst Iceman has honed the ability to do just about everything in winter wearing just shorts, I think us normal humans would do better being more layered up. We can withstand the cold weather indoors with a cup of hot chocolate by the fireplace in peace. (end off with a shot of someone drinking hot chocolate and enjoying himself)
[1] Read more: Why are Some People Colder than Others?
This video is courtesy of David Yam on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Script is written inside per picture.
Page 1
Why do some people handle cold better than others?
Why is it that some are so fearful of the cold;
they’d rather die than be caught outside without all the winter gear on, mask and all,
while others can wear one layer for a morning jog?
What makes all the difference?
Page 2
Imagine a giant furnace,
to generate more heat we need to burn more coal.
Now imagine your body as this giant furnace,
our metabolism is the fire
and sugars are the coals.
To generate more heat within our bodies, we need to burn more sugars with our metabolism.
(Sorry for the crappy drawings. I’m really bad at drawing.)
Why do some people handle cold better than others? Why is it that some are so fearful of the cold; they’d rather die than be caught outside without all the winter gear on, mask and all, while others can wear one layer for a morning jog? What makes all the difference?
Imagine a giant furnace, to generate more heat we need to burn more coal. Now imagine your body as this giant furnace, our metabolism is the fire and sugars are the coals. To generate more heat for warmth, our bodies’ burn more sugars. This is the first way we deal with cold.
Our blood circulatory system acts like highways to the different organs, imagine our blood as trucks carrying oxygen and heat to the organs. As the speed of the trucks are higher, more heat falls out and is lost to the surroundings. Hence our body slows down the flow of blood by tightening up the blood vessels. This is the same as squeezing a lane on the highway.
It turns out that our bodies aren’t always equally created. Some just have better genetic makeup than others, and are able to produce more heat from the same amount of sugars. Much like how some people never fatten up no matter how much they eat!
Contrary to belief, size DOES matter, and so does body type! For one, smaller bodies have more surface area to volume ratio and hence more areas to lose heat. Secondly, bodies with stockier frames and shorter arms mean less distance for blood to travel. Lastly, people with a “healthy bulge” have an extra layer of “insulation” from the cold!
But thankfully there is one way to increase our tolerance to cold: Meditation!
Introducing “Wim Hof” from the Netherlands, In 2009, he completed a full marathon in temperatures below - 20 degrees celcius dressed in nothing but his shorts. Wow. I’d probably not last 100 metres. Wim Hof is aptly nicknamed “Iceman” for his ability to withstand extreme cold conditions by “turning up” his internal thermostat with his “mind”. Wim Hof practices meditation that allows his body to produce more heat than an average person, as well as shut down certain proteins to slow heat loss to surroundings.
In 2011, he spent 1 hour 52 minutes standing fully immersed in ice. Now that’s just crazy!
After understanding all this knowledge about withstanding the cold… perhaps there are mutants around us? These would be people that have evolved to better survive the cold.
And if the next Ice Age were to come, maybe they’d be the only ones around.
If I were to go out for a run now, dressed like this, you’d probably call me nuts right? Because I wouldn’t be able to withstand the cold, and likely die, of hypothermia.
However, in 2009 Wim Hof, a Dutch man, completed a full marathon in temperatures close to dressed in nothing but his shorts. Where untrained individuals probably would die, when the body is too cold for normal metabolism and body function. Wim Hof, aptly nicknamed “Iceman”, is able to thrive in the cold. Now what makes “Iceman” able to survive whilst others can’t?
To study Wim Hof, researchers in Netherlands exposed Iceman to extreme temperatures in an ice bath for 1 hour and 44 minutes. Normally, a subject’s core body temperature would plummet below, causing hypothermia to kick in. However, while Wim Hof’s skin temperatures dropped by to, which is very cold, but his core temperature stayed surprisingly warm. It merely dropped to . The researchers couldn’t explain exactly what had happened.
One reason could be that Wim Hof is a genetic outlier. With greater ability to regulate his body temperature, producing more heat through higher metabolism. In a separate study, individuals with ancestors that lived in cold climates were found to have mitochondria that generated more heat and less chemical energy. [1] This enabled them to better survive the cold. Wim Hof is from the Netherlands, so maybe it’s his genetic ancestry that saves him? Hmm. But as a one of a kind “Iceman”, it doesn’t seem that genetics itself is enough.
Another possible reason is his physical makeup. With a large stocky body and shorter limbs, one has less surface area contacting the cold. [2] This results in less heat loss to the environment, hence individuals can better preserve vital heat. However, Wim Hof doesn’t have a usually large body or shorter limbs, at least not from the pictures I see. For all we know, he has normal proportions as anyone else. We could attribute increased levels of fat as more insulation to heat, however Wim Hof doesn’t have more fat than anyone else either. So really, after all this, what gives?
Wim Hof practices “g-tummo”, a Tibetan form of breathing, which enables him to double his metabolism. Effectively producing enough heat to keep his core temperatures warm. Well you might tempted to believe that this is wishy-washy non sciency-ish. However, studies conducted at NUS have confirmed that g-tummo is able to increase core body temperature. [3] The study was conducted on Western participants, all of whom had no prior knowledge of the technique no less.
To quote Wim Hof, “We have perfect mechanisms in our bodies, but we intervened with nature when we started wearing clothes. We need to reawaken those mechanisms.” In fact, he hopes to teach others the ability to harness the mind, enabling it to control areas of the body we never thought we could. Other than combatting cold, Wim Hof has shown control over his immune system. And with his techniques, trained individuals have been able to consciously activate innate immune responses. [4] Now if we were to fully understand his methods and how it works, who knows what doors it could open in our resistance to cold / diseases?
(Yea, i think its still too wordy.
I’ll add in the cutscenes / camera angles / go through the writing again tmr.)
[1] Wade, Nicholas. “Ice Age Ancestry May Keep Body Warmer and Healthier,” New York Times, January 9, 2004.
[2] “Mind Over Matter? Core Body Temperature Controlled by the Brain,” National University of Singapore, April 8, 2013.
[3] Koxa, Matthijs, et al. “Voluntary Activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System and Attenuation of the Innate Immune Response in Humans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 20 (2014): 7379–84.
David’s rough cut is not available.
This video is courtesy of David Yam on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
How Can I Survive the Cold?
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: David Yam
Written By: David Yam
Additional Scripting: Elizabeth Choe, George Zaidan, Ceri R, Jaime Goldstein
Executive Producer: David Yam
Director: Joshua Cheong
Editor: Paul Folino, Ceri R, Elizabeth Choe
Production Assistant: Joshua Cheong
Link to Joshua Cheong’s Page on Tumblr
This video is courtesy of Joshua Cheong on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
OMG! Can my password be stolen from Facebook’s database?
This is just a preliminary pitch on how to introduce one of the most important concepts in security: Hashing.
The YouTube has yet to be fully processed so it may take a while to come live. Till then, imma get some sleep!
Narrator / Host:
Did you know that Google stores about 45 billion index pages of information? If each page of information was a sheet of paper and if we stack them all together, we would create a tower of paper 610 times taller than Mount Everest!
So how can a search engine like Google find you results so quickly in split second when the information stored in Google is humongous? It’s like finding a needle in haystack; so how’s it done?
Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a hotel room. Here’s James and he is going to hide in his hotel room. But we want to find where is James.
The simplest way would be to run through every room nearest to you and keep finding. But that would take a long time.
Is there a better way I can find James? Hmmm.. (rub chin and raise one eyebrow)
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in increasing numbers of the hotel rooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. And then if the person starts with a smaller alphabet than James, we head to the left. If not we head to the rooms to the right. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we find James at a much much shorter time.
Is finding James such a big deal? Well, yes! Finding James faster means getting your results on Google faster. Because finding James is like searching a keyword term on Google. And that means less waiting time for all of us.
So the next time you do a Google search, know that you’re in good hands with the fastest methods to find your search.
This video is courtesy of Joshua Cheong on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Script: Why Can’t I Find my Stuff?
Narrator:
It’s winter time and I’m getting dressed to go outside. But every time I start putting on layers after layers of clothes, I always can’t seem to find my gloves. Are they in the kitchen? On my bed? On the couch? Oh dear, I seem to have a problem. Why can’t I find my stuff? Is it because I have a lot of stuff that makes it so hard to remember?
Well, Google stores about 45 billion index pages of information. If each page of information was a sheet of paper and if we stack them all together, we would create a tower of paper 610 times taller than Mount Everest!
So how can a search engine like Google find your search results so quickly while I find it so difficult to find a pair of gloves? It’s like finding a needle in haystack; so how’s it done?
Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a hotel room. Here’s James and he is going to hide in his hotel room. But we want to find where is James.
The simplest way would be to run through every room nearest to you and keep finding. But that would take a long time.
Is there a better way I can find James? Hmmm.. (rub chin and raise one eyebrow)
Well, it turns out that there’s a better way known as Binary Search.
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in increasing numbers of the hotel rooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. And then if the person starts with a smaller alphabet than James, we head to the left. If not we head to the rooms to the right. We then head off to the middle room of the newly sectioned area. And we rinse and repeat. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we find James at a much much shorter time.
How much shorter would that be? Well, that depends on number of people staying at the hotel. Let’s say it takes 10 seconds to knock on each hotel door and there’s 500 people, it would take about 80 minutes for the first method and 1.5 minutes for Binary Search. If there were a thousand people in the hotel, it would take 160 minutes for the first method and only 1.6 minutes for Binary Search. Now that’s a whole lot of difference.
Is finding James such a big deal? Well, yes! Finding James faster means getting your results on Google faster. Because finding James is like searching a keyword term on Google. And that means less waiting time for all of us.
So how does any of what we just learned help us to find things better at home? Noticed how the people in the hotel were arranged in rooms numbers based on alphabetical order? So the location of each person in a different hotel room depends on the alphabetical relationship of their names. So we don’t need to remember which person is in which room, we just need to remember the alphabetical relationship that all the people have with each other.
In the same way, simply by placing your home items in locations where they have a natural relationship to makes it easier for us to find them. The TV remote goes near the TV, the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard and the winter gloves goes in the winter jacket.
*Finds gloves in the jacket
Aha! So that’s where my gloves are!
And that’s how we find stuff better. Not a just little bit better but a lot better!
Why can’t I find my stuff?
Narrator:
It’s winter time and I’m getting dressed to go outside. But every time I start putting on layers after layers of clothes, I always can’t seem to find my gloves. (Location in the dorm; scene of me putting on layers of clothes and discovering in horror that I lost my gloves) Are they in the kitchen? On my bed? On the couch? Oh dear, I seem to have a problem. Why can’t I find my stuff? Is it because I have a lot of stuff that makes it so hard to remember?
Well, Google stores about 45 billion index pages of information. If each page of information was a sheet of paper (host holds up a piece of paper) and if we stack them all together, we would create a tower of paper 610 times taller than Mount Everest! (Camera men on the sides dump a mountain of papers on the host, causing him / her to comically fall over)
So how can a search engine like Google find your search results so quickly while I find it so difficult to find a pair of gloves? It’s like finding a needle in haystack; so how’s it done? (A camera closeup while the host hold up in his / her hand a needle and casually throws it in the stack of papers)
Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a hotel room. (*Change scene: A sonorous “ding!” sound of a hotel lift, a pan shot of the interior of Hyatt Regency Cambridge hotel)
Here’s James and he is going to hide in his hotel room. But we want to find where is James.
The simplest way would be to run through every room nearest to you and keep finding. But that would take a long time.
Is there a better way I can find James? Hmmm.. (rub chin and raise one eyebrow)
Well, it turns out that there’s a better way known as Binary Search.
(*The keywords “Binary Search” flashes over the host’s hands)
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in increasing numbers of the hotel rooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. And then if the person starts with a smaller alphabet than James, we head to the left. If not we head to the rooms to the right. We then head off to the middle room of the newly sectioned area. And we rinse and repeat. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we find James at a much much shorter time.
(The above scene would be done with simple animation drawing over my head with the host talking below on the camera)
How much shorter would that be? Well, that depends on number of people staying at the hotel. Let’s say it takes 10 seconds to knock on each hotel door and there’s 500 people, it would take about 80 minutes for the first method and 1.5 minutes for Binary Search. If there were a thousand people in the hotel, it would take 160 minutes for the first method and only 1.6 minutes for Binary Search. Now that’s a whole lot of difference.
(I suspect there might be a better way of illustrating this point that a slightly better algorithm make a huge difference when dealing with large problems)
Is finding James such a big deal? Well, yes! Finding James faster means getting your results on Google faster. Because finding James is like searching a keyword term on Google. And that means less waiting time for all of us.
So how does any of what we just learned help us to find things better at home? Noticed how the people in the hotel were arranged in rooms numbers based on alphabetical order? So the location of each person in a different hotel room depends on the alphabetical relationship of their names. So we don’t need to remember which person is in which room, we just need to remember the alphabetical relationship that all the people have with each other.
In the same way, simply by placing your home items in locations where they have a natural relationship to makes it easier for us to find them. The TV remote goes near the TV, the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard and the the winter gloves goes in the winter jacket.
(Location is back in the dorm *Finds gloves in the jacket)
Aha! So that’s where my gloves are!
And that’s how we find stuff better. Not a just little bit better but a lot better!
| SCENE # | LOCATIONs | VIDEOs | NARRATIONs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Koch | Film with B-roll of searching in my cupboards | Have you ever found it difficult to find a particular item in your house? Let’s say you’ve lost a pair of gloves and you spend the entire afternoon looking for it, but you just can’t find it. |
| 2 | Google Sign & Microsoft Sign @ Kendall | Back | You have encountered the same problem that companies like Google or Microsoft try to solve every single day: The problem of Search. |
| 3 | Hotel | Closeup |
Just like a house which stores thousands of different items, Google stores about 45 billion different index pages of information. If each page of information was a sheet of paper (host holds up a piece of paper) and if we stacked them all together, we would create a tower 600 times taller than Mount Everest! (Camera men on the sides dump a mountain of papers on the host, causing him / her to comically fall over) So how can a search engine like Google find your search results so quickly while we find it so difficult to find a pair of gloves? |
| 4 | MIT Dome Shot | Rule of Thirds, end by sweeping the camera up | Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a big school. |
| 5 | Building 4 Corridor |
Start by sweeping the camera down, Rule of Thirds Film with B-roll of running from room to room Film additional closeup shot |
Let’s suppose we’re looking for a student called “James”. To find James, the simplest way would be to run to every room nearest to you until you find him. But that would take a very long time. There’s a better way known as Binary Search. (*The keywords “Binary Search” flashes over the host’s hands) |
| 6 | Building 4 classroom table |
Shoot from top down (Try 11 cards) |
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in increasing numbers of the classrooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. If the person’s name starts with letter before ‘J’, we head to the right. If not we would go to the left. We then head off to the middle room of the newly sectioned area. And we rinse and repeat. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we found him much faster than using the first method. |
| 7 | Stata Center level 3? | Rule of thirds | How much faster would that be? Well, that depends on number of people staying at the hotel. Let’s say it takes 10 seconds to knock on each hotel door and there’s 500 people, it would take about 80 minutes for the first method and 1.5 minutes for Binary Search. If there were a thousand people in the hotel, it would take 160 minutes for the first method and only 1.6 minutes for Binary Search. Now that’s a whole lot of difference. |
| 8 | Google Sign @ Kendall | Rule of thirds | So a name like “James” is just a word, but companies like Google take in searches with a long combination of words, making it a bit more complicated. Just like identifying the word “James” from its first letter, Google identify unique characteristics of search phrases using over 200 factors. |
| 9 | Google Sign @ Kendall | Also notice how the better method depends on prearranging the people in alphabetical order? Computer scientists are always actively looking for better methods to sort, manage, and retrieve data. | |
| 10 | Hotel |
In the same way, simply by placing your home items in locations where they have a natural relationship, makes it easier for us to find them. The TV remote goes near the TV, the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard and the the winter gloves goes in the winter jacket. (Location is back in the dorm *Finds gloves in the jacket) Aha! So that’s where my gloves are! |
Why can’t I find my stuff? The Science of Search
Have you ever found it difficult to find a particular item in your house? Let’s say you’ve lost a pair of gloves and you spend the entire afternoon looking for it, but you just can’t find it. You have encountered the same problem that companies like Google or Microsoft try to solve every single day: The problem of Search.
Just like a house which stores thousands of different items, Google stores about 45 billion different index pages of information. If each page of information was a sheet of paper (Host holds up a piece of paper) and if we stacked them all together, we would create a tower of paper 600 times taller than Mount Everest! (Camera men on the sides dump a mountain of papers on the host, causing him / her to comically fall over)
So how can a search engine like Google find your search results so quickly while we find it so difficult to find a pair of gloves?
Well, it turns out that searching on the Internet is kinda like looking for a person in a hotel room. (*Change scene: a sonorous “ding!” sound of a hotel lift, a pan shot of the interior of Hyatt Regency Cambridge hotel)
Let’s suppose we’re looking for a guest called “James”. To find James, the simplest way would be to run to every room nearest to you until you find him. But that would take a very long time.
There’s a better way known as Binary Search. (*The keywords “Binary Search” flashes over the host’s hands)
Let’s say the people were arranged in alphabetical order in increasing numbers of the hotel rooms. We could run to the room in the middle and check if the name of the person in the room is James. If the person’s name starts with letter before ‘J’, we head to the right. If not we would go to the left. We then head off to the middle room of the newly sectioned area. And we rinse and repeat. Eventually we will find James just like the first method. But we found him much faster than using the first method. (The above scene would be done with simple animation drawing over my head with the host talking below on the camera)
How much faster would that be? Well, that depends on number of people staying at the hotel. Let’s say it takes 10 seconds to knock on each hotel door and there’s 500 people, it would take about 80 minutes for the first method and 1.5 minutes for Binary Search. If there were a thousand people in the hotel, it would take 160 minutes for the first method and only 1.6 minutes for Binary Search. Now that’s a whole lot of difference. (I suspect there might be a better way of illustrating this point that a slightly better algorithm make a huge difference when dealing with large problems, I could also make larger numbers to make the difference more significant)
So a name like “James” is just a word, but companies like Google take in searches with a long combination of words, making it a bit more complicated. Just like identifying the word “James” from it’s first letter, Google identify unique characteristics of search phrases using over 200 factors.
Also notice how the better method depends on prearranging the people in alphabetical order? Computer scientists are always actively looking for better methods to sort, manage, and retrieve data. In the same way, simply by placing your home items in locations where they have a natural relationship to makes it easier for us to find them. The TV remote goes near the TV, the shoes go to the shoe rack, the coats go into the cupboard and the the winter gloves goes in the winter jacket.
(Location is back in the dorm *Finds gloves in the jacket)
Aha! So that’s where my gloves are! And that’s the story of Search!
This video is courtesy of Joshua Cheong on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
This video is courtesy of Joshua Cheong on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: Joshua Cheong
Written By: Joshua Cheong
Additional Scripting: Elizabeth Choe, Jaime Goldstein, Ceri Riley, George Zaidan, students of 20.219
Executive Producer: Joshua Cheong
Director: David Yam
Editor: David Yam, Nathan Hernandez, Elizabeth Choe, Ceri Riley
Production Assistant: David Yam
Link to Kenneth Cheah’s Page on Tumblr
This video is courtesy of Kenneth Cheah on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Kenneth: Once upon a time (in the year 2009), Stephen Hawking held a party with all the usuals, wine, hors d’oeuvres, and yet, no one turned up!
“Show party setting”
You’d thought that he’d be upset
“show stephen hawking with sad face”
But it turns out that he was far from it
“show sad face turning into smiling”
as it had just proven his own belief that it was impossible to travel back in time! He had in fact sent out an invitation to the party for time travellers
A lack of party-goers meant that time travel was probably impossible (or just that people of the future thought the Hawking was too lame)
Is time travel really not possible then?
When we think about it, we’re all actually time travelling, at a rate of 1hour / hour, which means that for every 1 hour we experience, 1 hour passes around us!
In the year 1905, Einstein proposed that when we travel at extreme speeds, time around us actually slows down, and that we could experience time at an “accelerated” rate
In other words, when we are travelling at a high speed, we would be “time travelling” at a speed of more than 1 hour / hour that we experience.
This concept has been seen in many modern sci-fi movies, the most recent of which would be in Interstellar, where Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaghey’s character descends to a planet where time passes a lot slower than the rest of the universe around them.
Based on some of Einstein’s equations, should we travel at a speed of approximately 90% the speed of light (number appears on screen), a year to us would seem like 2.3 years to the rest of the world.
This means that should we invent a space ship which could travel at a speed of 0.9c, when we take a year trip in it, all your friends and family would have aged 2.3 years in that period!
“Insert little animation of a space ship taking off and coming back, to see a infant turning a toddler on earth, while an infant maybe remains as an infant on the ship”
Travelling at 0.99c, this number becomes 7 years. In fact, the faster you travel, the slower time around you would slow down.
This is probably not the version of time travelling you’re thinking of, but you are travelling through time at a different speed from what we would normally do, and it might be possible to travel forward through time should we attain high enough speeds!
What about travelling back in time? do we run backwards with incredible speeds to be able to go back in time?
flash the FLASH running backwards across the screen
One theory is that we would need to travel faster than the speed of light, to be able to travel at negative rates of time travel.
Part of einstein’s initial proposal when he talked about time dilation (which is travelling a high speeds to slow down time around us), was that it was impossible to travel higher than the speed of light.
Why was it not possible to travel faster than the speed of light though?
Another effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity (where all of this is under), is that when we travel at high enough speeds, time and space aren’t the only thing around us that changes, as mass does to.
With more mass, it takes a lot more energy to move the object at the same speed, and as we approach the speed of light, the amount of energy required would be way too great, and even so, we might not be exceeding the speed of light, but merely making the object heavier, and heavier.
Is it thus really impossible to travel back in time? We know we can travel forward (not efficiently), and maybe science has just not yet uncovered the holy grail of it all. Maybe one day, we would encounter time travellers, and know more about how possible or impossible this feat could be.
In the meantime though, I guess we could continue hosting more time traveller parties, maybe they just didn’t like hawkings?
This video is courtesy of Kenneth Cheah on Tumblr and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Brief summary and trailer or video!
Kenneth: Once upon a time (in the year 2009), Stephen Hawking held a party with all the usuals, wine, hors d’oeuvres, and yet, no one turned up!
“Show party setting”
You’d thought that he’d be upset
“show stephen hawking with sad face”
But it turns out that he was far from it
“show sad face turning into smiling”
He had in fact only sent out the invitations to the party after the party, and had addressed it to all time travelers of the future. He did so in an attempt to prove his own theory, that Time Travel Was not Possible!
No party-goers, meant no travelling back in time!
Or were people of the future just too cold for Hawkings?
Is time travel possible then?
What exactly is time travelling?
When we think about it, we’re all actually time travelling, but not in the manner you might be thinking of.
What we are doing, is to time travel at a rate of 1hour / hour, which means that for every 1 hour we experience, 1 hour passes around us!
In the year 1905, Einstein proposed that when we travel at extreme speeds, time around us actually slows down, and that we could experience time at an “accelerated” rate.
In other words, when we are travelling at a high speed for an hour, the world around us could be experiencing time at a much faster rate, for e.g. 7 hours could have passed.
This has been seen in many modern sci-fi movies, the most recent of which would be in Interstellar, where Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaghey’s character descends to a planet where time passes a lot slower than the rest of the universe around them.
Based on some of Einstein’s math, if we travel at a speed of approximately 90% the speed of light (number appears on screen), a year to us would seem like 2.3 years to the rest of the world.
This means that should we invent a space ship which could travel at a speed of 0.9c, when we take a year trip in it, all your friends and family would have aged 2.3 years in that period!
“Insert little animation of a space ship taking off and coming back, to see a infant turning a toddler on earth, while an infant maybe remains as an infant on the ship”
Travelling at 0.99c, this number becomes 7 years. In fact, the faster you travel, the slower time around you would slow down.
This is probably not the idea of time travelling we often have, but you are travelling through time at a different speed from what we would normally do, and so it might be possible to travel forward through time should we attain high enough speeds!
What about travelling back in time? Can we run backwards with incredible speeds to be able to go back in time? Doesn’t sound really possible does it?
“flash the FLASH running backwards across the screen”
How about, travelling faster than the speed of light?
In fact, that’s one of the possible theories of reverse time travelling, that we would need to travel faster than the speed of light.
Part of einstein’s initial proposal when he talked about time dilation (which is travelling a high speeds to slow down time around us), was that it was not possible for us to travel at speeds faster than the speed of light.
Why?
Another effect of Einstein’s theory of relativity (where all of this is under), is that when we travel at high enough speeds, time and space aren’t the only thing around us that changes. One other factor which changes with high speed, is the mass of the object!
With more mass, it takes a lot more energy to move the object at the same speed, and as we approach the speed of light, the amount of energy required would be way too great.
Even if we did manage to put in more energy, we might not be actually increasing the speed, but merely making the object heavier, and heavier.
Is it thus really impossible to travel back in time? We know we can travel forward (not efficiently), and maybe science has just not yet uncovered the holy grail of it all. Maybe one day, we would encounter time travelers, and know more about how possible or impossible this feat could be.
In the meantime though, I guess we could continue hosting more time traveler parties in hope that one of them would finally see a guest from the future.
This video is courtesy of Kenneth Cheah on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
This video is courtesy of Kenneth Cheah on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Is Time Travel Possible?
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: Kenneth Cheah
Written By: Kenneth Cheah
Additional scripting: Elizabeth Choe, Jaime Goldstein, Ceri Riley, George Zaidan, students of 20.219
Executive Producer: Elizabeth Choe
Director: Kenneth Cheah
Editor: Kenneth Cheah
Production Assistant: Yuliya and PJ
Link to Nathan Hernandez’s Page on Tumblr
This video is courtesy of WaywardLightning on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Lots lots lots lots to improve
Just a few things:
Me opening fridge, going ‘ugh’ and camera looks at rotten veggies
Goes to me in some setting…kitchen burred in bg, me in fg???
Have you ever wondered how things rot in the fridge? Like, it’s literally a flesh eating disease just chilling in your kitchen.
bottom of screen “don’t worry, it can’t eat you”
No big deal. Ask anyone and they’ll be saying something along the lines of “it’s bacteria I think.” And that’s mostly true but how does it work?!?! How does it turn a perfectly good floret of broccoli
Screen to picture of perfectly healthy broccoli
Into that?
Screen to picture of disgusting broccoli decay mush. Shudder.
After this I won’t be doing instructions for visuals since there’s waaaaay too many to figure out at this time
Well, the wide and wonderful world is full of a variety of creatures, among them bacteria and fungi, many of these whom—we’ll call them Saprophytes—survive entirely by eating dead matter, playing crucial roles in the recycling of carbon and nitrogen back into the living world. Instead of how we eat food and digest it in our stomachs, these organisms break down their food outside their bodies and then absorb the small food particles in a process known as extracellular digestion.
How food is broken down is largely dependent on what type of food it is. Fresh foods, like fruit and veggies and meat rot a whole lot differently than processed foods like potato chips do. In this video, we’re going to focus on fresh foods and in particular, veggies and fruits.
When looking at vegetables and fruits, determining whether fungus or bacteria can infect it is largely dependent on pH, or how acidic something is. Fungus tends to function in all pHs while bacteria prefer more neutral zones. Vegetables are susceptible to both, because they often have a nearly perfectly neutral pH. Fruit, on the other hand, are more acidic, and mostly only have fungi to worry about.
Let’s look at broccoli. Since broccoli is a vegetable, it has to deal with fungi and bacteria.
When a bacteria or fungus wants to invade the broccoli, it’ll secrete an enzyme to break down the outer barriers of the broccoli’s cells, which is made of cellulose and other polysaccharides, or complex sugars. Once it’s past this barrier, the water and other nutrients of the cell are released. This is what causes that gross liquid to form around the plant.
After this, the invader will release a variety of enzymes. Amylases will break down storage starches into simple sugar. Lipases will break apart any lipids into fatty acids and glycerol. Proteases will break the bonds between proteins and result in amino acids.
As smaller particles form, the fungi and bacteria will absorb the nutrients through passive diffusion, transport, and endocytosis.
Usually this process takes 10–14 days to reach a point at which it probably isn’t safe to eat the veggie / fruit and after it’ll start to look like this.
How do you prevent your fresh food from going bad? My advice, eat your veggies.
This video is courtesy of WaywardLightning on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Very rough
This video is courtesy of WaywardLightning on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
I will explain why it’s so terrible.
This video is courtesy of WaywardLightning on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: Nathan Hernandez
Written By: Nathan Hernandez
Additional Scripting: Elizabeth Choe, George Zaidan, Andrea Desrosiers
Executive Producer: Nathan Hernandez
Director: Nathan Hernandez
Editor: Nathan Hernandez
Production Assistant: Andrea Desrosiers
Link to Yuliya Klochan’s Page on Tumblr
This video is courtesy of Yuliya Klochan on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
The beginning of an odd mathematical journey that asks (but cannot always answer) questions like, “Is math true?” or “Could The Matrix scenario happen to us?”
Note: This seems, at this point, an odd amalgamation of various mathematical ideas. A read-through takes just under 5 minutes, but I will most likely filter a lot of the material. I just wanted to grasp the character for now. Also, phrases in brackets [] are optional and italicized ones are filming directions.
(in a thunderous voice over an “interesting” theatrical background)
Introducing your new favorite superhero…
(thunder, Math Woman revealed standing tall in her superhero suit)
Math Woman!!!
Now, you’ve heard of Batman, Iron Man, Hulk… (show images of these characters)
But have you heard of Math Woman, the glorious offspring of Mathematics, the Queen of All Sciences? Math Woman is the Superhero Princess that always saves the world.
Here’s her story.
(The following involves acting, changing clothing with often goofy results, and using props / people; in the interest of the reader’s eyes, I will omit the description of most scenes)
Every morning Math Woman gets dressed in a perfectly matched outfit, always aware of the latest fashion trends ahead of everyone else. She smiles a golden ratio smile. [Scientists calculated it to be perfection.]
Sometimes Math Woman confuses a cup with a donut at breakfast, a mistake many of her followers, mathematicians, may make [though don’t tell them that]. But she always makes the perfect half-inch toasted bread [coated with exactly 0.4 grams of butter per square inch.] (show delectable toast here)
On days when the world is safe, Math Woman then relaxes at home. Once, she solved an important math problem and earned a million dollars. She will never have to work again.
Instead, Math Woman may create the world’s wackiest art (fractals) and find that it can help cure cancer. She may compose the next latest music hit or the world’s ugliest tune [so ugly it hurts! (play if possible)]; play a game to predict a war, solve a crime, find a terrorist’s bomb…
At snack time, Math Woman gobbles up an infinite number of chocolate pieces: First a half, then a quarter, an eighth…. Ask your math teacher how she still stays in shape after that!
Still seems like a pretty regular being? Well, here are some Superbly Superb Superpowers Math Woman possesses.
She can make two bowling balls out of one with no extra materials, or talk to anyone in the world with the universal language of Math. (show cool math formula images)
How can she do that? Well, Math Woman sees patterns, shapes, and numbers in everything and everyone. This allows her to do incredible stuff, like predicting the future, or even travelling to infinity and beyond. (show Buzz Lightyear image if copyright laws allow it)
And, so, if her powers predict a disaster, Math Woman immediately flies to the rescue.
A typhoon happening, you say? Math Woman is way ahead of you.
(different voice, childlike)
Does Math Woman ever get in trouble?
(back to normal)
Well, of course. No Superhero Princess is perfect.
(change of scene for a more dramatic fantasy setting)
One time, for example, giant robots attacked the Earth. (show footage from some film showing machines attacking, if possible)
Everyone was terrified. The robots talked and behaved just like us, and it seemed that they were even stronger…
Math Woman had no idea what to do. She was smart, but could she defeat the awful machines?
And then, Queen Mathematics stepped in. She sent a message to young mathematician Kurt Godel, who immediately set out to help Math Woman on her quest. He said to her,
(male voice, background could be an image of Godel)
“Machines can never be as smart as humans. We are infinitely more powerful than they are with our minds. Mathematics proved it, so it must be true. Don’t give up, Math Woman!”
(back to normal)
And Math Woman didn’t. The problem before her was a challenge. But she took her time and persevered.
Naturally, Math Woman won.
Never again would the evil robots threaten humanity. And if they did, ha, we would always win anyway.
Do you know how?
Math Woman applies what you learn at school to save the world. And if you practice solving those puzzling math problems, you can soon become just like her. After all, Math Woman knows that there are millions other heroes out there. You can ask Queen Mathematics herself.
So, explore what Math Woman has to say. Don’t give up when the difficult villains come. Then, you, too, can join Math Woman on an infinite pursuit of adventure.
(back to original background, dramatic final voice over)
Save the world with math. No superpowers required.
The End
This video is courtesy of Yuliya Klochan on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Repeating patterns called fractals are present in every facet of our existence, and are indispensable in nature research, medicine, and technology. In that way, mathematics helps us explore and understand the world around us.
(Camera zooms into host standing by the Charles River, talking on a cell phone; when camera is close, the host acknowledges it)
What do a cellphone, a river, and a cancer cell have in common?
The answer is… (black screen with the word animated on it, framed with images) fractals.
(back to Charles River, host drawing repeating pattern with chalk while talking)
Fractals in mathematics are never-ending patterns.
(Change setting: Now in a room with a blank wall and computer; show animation of Sierpinski triangle while talking on screen)
Scientists can program these infinite patterns by repeating a simple mathematical process over and over. So, if you zoom in, you’ll see the same shape again and again and again… (show making sierpinski).
Similarly, a tree grows by repetitive branching. Just like our fractal, a tree extends its branches, one smaller than the other, but similar.
Of course, a tree can’t grow as far and precisely as a “truly mathematical” fractal, but parts of it show enough like properties that we can study nature in terms of fractals.
In fact, so many things in nature have these pattern properties (show snowflake and seashell, fill screen with others–fern, water spinning out of tap; somehow zoom in or show similar parts), it sometimes feels like the world itself is one giant fractal! (fill the screen with patterned shapes until it’s too much)
So Many Fractals!!! (head spin)
A bit overwhelming, right? Well, one way to explain this abundance of patterns is the fact that nature is just great at reusing efficient mechanisms.
Rivers of the planet flow like the “rivers of blood” in our bodies. Lightning bolts become electrifying rivers of the sky. And just look at this honey!
Here’s something even wackier: A brain fractal shaped forest!
Whew, that’s enough fractals to make my fractal brain hurt.
Luckily, mathematicians have found a way to describe the wacky structures. They’ve accepted that clouds are not spheres and bark is not smooth… But, with fractal geometry, we can mathematically explore them!
In the 1970’s, a mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot was hired to investigate noise in telephone lines. Now, Mandelbrot loved connecting images with numbers, so he immediately looked at the noise in terms of the shapes it created. And he came up with this: (Show Mandelbrot set and talk over it)
At first, the image didn’t look too special. In fact, it kinda resembled a turtle with a giant head (show turtle).
It wasn’t until nighttime that Mandelbrot looked closer. He zoomed in once, and found a smaller turtle latched on to the original one. And an even smaller turtle on that one. Mandelbrot kept zooming and zooming and the turtles kept shrinking and shrinking, but they were still all the same shape!
Mandelbrot was convinced he’d seen a nightmare! But when the shape remained on the screen the next day, Mandelbrot knew he was onto something huge. A simple equation, applied repeatedly, carried incredible properties.
What if, thought he, you could create such expressions for other natural phenomena?
And that’s exactly what mathematicians do today. Fractal geometry allows them to model, say, mountain ranges (animate from fractal triangles), and then use the models to study earthquakes or create realistic special effects for our favorite movies (Star Wars battle / death scene; pause, then show me looking disturbed).
In healthier news, fractals may also help doctors diagnose cancer faster and more accurately. They can study the edges of various cells in our bodies using fractal geometry. Here, the cell on the right is more jagged and repeating than that on the left, which means it’s the more aggressive, faster-growing cancer cell. This way of discovering cancer can be about 10 times more effective than the current methods!
So that’s how cancer cells and rivers relate. But what about cell phones? They aren’t really a part of nature.
Well, in the 90’s, a radio astronomer by the name of Nathan Cohen was having troubles with his landlord. The man wouldn’t let him put a radio antenna on the roof! So, Cohen decided to make a more compact, fractal radio antenna instead (Koch)
The landlord didn’t notice it, and it worked better than the ones before!
Working further, Cohen designed a new version, this time using a shape called “the Menger Sponge” (voiceover over animation of traveling through the Menger Sponge). The fractal’s infinite “sponginess” allowed the antennae to receive multiple different signals.
(soapy sponge used as prop; maybe host is in shower?)
The Menger Sponge is not really the sponge you’d be scrubbing your back with, but you can still think of it like that. Imagine both water and soap getting through your sponge’s holes, except the water is Wi Fi and the soap is, say, Bluetooth. Without Cohen’s “sponge,” your cell phone would have to look something like a giraffe to receive both those signals (illustrate: Phone with antennas glued on for those two signals). Not quite as handy, is it?
(closing statement delivered at original Charles River location)
Fractals are already very common, yet we are still searching for more applications, asking questions, building new patterns and exploring nature’s best. Here at MIT (move camera from host and Charles river to MIT dome right across) and everywhere in the world.
Look around you. What beautiful patterns do you see?
The End
What do snowflakes and cell phones have in common?
Snowflakes have intricate detail no matter how closely you look. In mathematics, such shapes are called fractals.
Fractals are never-ending patterns that on any scale, on any level of zoom, look roughly the same. Computer scientists can program these infinite patterns by repeating an often simple mathematical process over and over.
To model a snowflake, for example, start by drawing an equilateral triangle. Divide each side into three equal parts and build another equilateral triangle on top of each side.
Take out the middle, and repeat the process, this time with 1, 2, 3, 4 times 3, which are 12 sides. Eventually, the shape will look something like this:
This curve is called in mathematics a Koch Snowflake. It is a fractal because, if you zoom in, you’ll get this same pattern (show pattern) again and again.
The Koch fractal is useful not only for modeling snowflakes.
In 1990’s, a radio astronomer named Nathan Cohen used the Koch snowflake to revolutionize wireless communications.
At the time, Cohen was having troubles with his landlord. The man wouldn’t let him put a radio antenna on the roof! So, Cohen decided to make a more compact, fractal radio antenna instead (show wire bent as Koch snowflake.)
The landlord didn’t notice it, and it worked better than the ones before!
Working further, Cohen designed a new version, this time using a fractal called “the Menger Sponge” (build a tangible model of the Sponge, and show it). The fractal’s infinite “sponginess” allowed the antennae to let through multiple different signals.
(soapy sponge used as prop; maybe host is in shower?)
The Menger Sponge is not really the sponge you’d be scrubbing your back with, but you can still think of it kind of like that. Imagine both water and soap getting through your sponge’s holes, except the water is Wi Fi and the soap is, say, Bluetooth.
The fractal shape allows the antenna to operate well at many different frequencies simultaneously. Before Cohen’s invention, antennas had to be “cut” for one necessary frequency. That was the only frequency they could operate at.
So, without Cohen’s “sponge,” your cell phone would have to look something like a hedgehog to receive different signals, including the radio signal that allows you to hear your friends when they call (illustrate: Phone with several antennas glued on). As Cohen later proved, only fractal shapes could work with such a wide range of frequencies.
Today, millions of wireless communication devices, such as laptops and barcode scanners, also use Cohen’s fractal antenna.
Cohen’s genius invention, however, was not the first application of fractals in the world. Turns out, nature has been doing it the whole time!
Natural selection has allowed it to create the most efficient systems and organisms, most of which (if not all) evolved to a fractal shape.
The spiral fractal, for example, is present in seashells, broccoli, and hurricanes.
So, many natural systems previously thought off-limits to mathematicians were suddenly explained in terms of fractals. The fractal tree for example, is relatively easy to program, and allows mathematicians to study anything from river systems to blood vessels and lightning bolts.
Thus, fractals allow us to learn nature’s best practices, and then apply them to solve real world problems. Much like Cohen’s antenna revolutionized telecommunications, other fractal research is changing fields of medicine, weather prediction, and many more. Here at MIT (move camera from host and Charles river to MIT dome right across) and everywhere in the world.
Look around you. What beautiful patterns do you see?
What do snowflakes and cell phones have in common?
Well, let me start by drawing a snowflake.
First, I’d draw an equilateral triangle, divide each side into three equal parts, and build another equilateral triangle on top of each side (this “demo” can be done on a blackboard or whiteboard).
Then take out the middle, and repeat the process, this time with 1, 2, 3, 4 times 3, which are 12 sides. Eventually, the shape will look something like this:
This curve is called in mathematics a Koch Snowflake. If I repeated the process again and again, and looked anywhere, I would see this same pattern: (Show)
Such never-ending patterns that on any scale, on any level of zoom, look roughly the same are called fractals. Computer scientists can program these infinite patterns by repeating an often simple mathematical process over and over.
In 1990’s, a radio astronomer named Nathan Cohen used the Koch snowflake to revolutionize wireless communications.
At the time, Cohen was having troubles with his landlord. The man wouldn’t let him put a radio antenna on the roof! So, Cohen decided to make a more compact, fractal radio antenna instead (show wire bent as Koch snowflake.) The landlord didn’t notice it.
And it worked better than the ones before!
Working further, Cohen designed a new version, this time using a fractal called “the Menger Sponge” (build a tangible model of the Sponge, and show it).
(soapy sponge used as prop; maybe host is in shower?)
The Menger Sponge is not really the sponge you’d be scrubbing your back with, but you can still think of it kind of like that. Imagine both water and soap getting through your sponge’s holes, except the water is Wi Fi and the soap is, say, Bluetooth.
The fractal’s infinite “sponginess” allows the antenna to operate well at many different frequencies simultaneously. Before Cohen’s invention, antennas had to be “cut” for one necessary frequency. That was the only frequency they could operate at.
So, without Cohen’s “sponge,” your cell phone would have to look something like a hedgehog to receive different signals, including the radio signal that allows you to hear your friends when they call (illustrate: Phone with several antennas glued on and labels).
Cohen later proved that only fractal shapes could work with such a wide range of frequencies. Today, millions of wireless communication devices, such as laptops and barcode scanners, also use Cohen’s fractal antenna.
Cohen’s genius invention, however, was not the first application of fractals in the world. Nature has been doing it the whole time, and not just with snowflakes!
Natural selection favors the most efficient systems and organisms, often of a fractal shape.
The spiral fractal, for example, is present in seashells, broccoli, and hurricanes.
So, many natural systems previously thought off-limits to mathematicians can now be explained in terms of fractals. The fractal tree for example, is relatively easy to program, and allows mathematicians to study anything from river systems to blood vessels and lightning bolts.
Thus, fractals allow us to learn nature’s best practices, and then apply them to solve real world problems. Much like Cohen’s antenna revolutionized telecommunications, other fractal research is changing fields of medicine, weather prediction, and many more. Here at MIT (move camera from host and Charles river to MIT dome right across) and everywhere in the world.
Look around you. What beautiful patterns do you see?
Stata Center (3 pm, January 14)
East Campus (12:30 pm, January 15)
This video is courtesy of Yuliya Klochan on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
This video is courtesy of Yuliya Klochan on YouTube and is provided under our Creative Commons license.
Fractals!
Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA, MIT
Hosted By: Yuliya Klochan
Written By: Yuliya Klochan
Additional Scripting: Elizabeth Choe, Jaime Goldstein, Ceri Riley, George Zaidan, students of 20.219
See the full credits on the course Tumblr.
Yuliya’s video was professionally produced by Science Out Loud after this course finished.
This video is from MITK12Videos on YouTube and is provided under their Creative Commons license.
