Journey into Maths Country

tv show

poster for Journey into Maths Country

20 total episodes

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2 seasons

First Aired September 23, 2021

Overview

Math is an exotic and confusing country. We speak a bizarre language, full of homeomorphisms, differential varieties, transfinite numbers. But we also find epic landscapes, dizzying ideas and even, sometimes, useful things!

tv poster

Planar Tessellations

Season 2 - Episode 4 - 0h 10m

Air Date

October 10, 2023

Overview

A tessellation is a way of covering a plane with a repeating pattern... Basically, it's like creating wallpaper. In 1975, Marjorie Rice (1923- 2017), a mother and amateur mathematician, read an article by Martin Gardner in Scientific American that listed ALL possible "pentagonal tessellations" in the plane. A mathematician had just proved that the list was complete. Except that Marjorie, working alone at home, found 4 new ones... The theorem was wrong!