“Donald in Mathmagic Land:” Ancient Math in Animation

Back in the heyday of Disney’s educational production, the company produced a 27 minute featurette which was wildly popular, having been used in American schools throughout the 60s and nominated for an Academy Award. Donald Duck enters a word where tress have square roots, birds recite pi, and the voice of adventure guides him through the wonderland of mathematics. Relevant for us in Core, Donald meets Pythagoras, who not only shares with him the secret of the Parthenon, but conveys to Donald and the audience that math isn’t just for eggheads but gives us music, architecture, art, games, and reveals to us the secrets of the human body. The golden rectangle of old is all around us, so maybe we should be less afraid of math and more willing to do our CC212 homework instead of putting it off until the last minute.

The video can be found here. Don’t fear numbers for, as Galileo says,“Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe”.

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