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The Pythagoras Story

Added May 06, 2020 •

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everybody it's Mister M and I'm here to talk to you today about an old dead guy named to sagres and I don't want to say really interesting and really weird before we get started talking about Pythagoras I want to say this is my first time doing one of these videos where I'm actually here in front of the camera so hopefully if we have moments and one thing that Pythagoras love is something that you can actually maybe see hidden in several places on this picture over here Tigres love is triangles so can you take a moment and just pause this video and think about all the different kinds of triangles that you know okay so we know that there are acute triangles obtuse triangles right triangles scalene triangles isosceles triangles equilateral triangles all kinds of triangles weather in universe Tigers love them all but he like one specific kind of triangle the best I can't blame him I kind of like right triangles myself there's something about a nice right triangle that's just feels right kind of looks like a ramp so if you're into action sports you might be a Santa Clara with you about right triangles a right triangle is called a right triangle because of that one 90 degree right angle right there a right triangle has two of what we call legs can you guess where the two legs are on this picture if you guessed did the two legs were these two sides of the three sides of the triangle you're right we call these the legs of the right triangle cuz it has a ramp it kind of props sides is on as a really weird name and this one you're going to have to remember it's probably new to you this side of a right triangle is called the hypotenuse and the hypotenuse of a right triangle that kind of crooked side it's the one that doesn't touch the right angle over here at all like the two legs do the hypotenuse usually looks kind of crooked or slanted depending on how the orientation of the right triangle sides which if you think about it I sort of right triangle has two and now we can get back to talking about this weirdo Pythagoras or Pythagoras depending on who was it mathematician and philosopher in ancient Greece in fact about 500 BC so about 2,500 years ago the world was a very different place this guy would go around you and geometry in stop and I was his job but he also wasn't just a geometer he was a philosopher people who sit around and love to talk about the me where did this all come from and who are you and who am I and what is the universe and all this kind of stuff so he in fact was so good at math and so respected as a philosopher that you started a school and people in ancient Greece would pay Pythagoras and they would send their kids to his school to learn all about the Tigers his wisdom in the area of philosophy what kinds of other stuff too and this school which became called the Pythagorean school or the school of the pythagoreans after Pythagoras who started it wasn't interesting place where a lot of important historical stuff happened in fact one of the cool things that happened with the pythagoreans is that they helped develop the 12 note musical scale that we now use in all of western music in the way they developed using meth if you see this little instrument over here that's called a liar and they would calculate perfect string length measurement the different strains harmonized together well harmonies are what led them to a 12 note scale interesting so Pythagoras has that going for him and that's not even the thing that is most famous for obviously he's got a sweet beard going good job with nice work this was not very fond of beans and this one may or may not be historically accurate but we have some sources that tell us his students every time you fart a little piece of your soul leaves your body never to come back again interesting philosophy Pythagoras and you can see why at his school obvious reasons by the way this school was more like what we would call 10 of a college did the students went and lived there and they ate together and together talk about the meaning of life together it eventually this school weird and Colton set the Tigers had a certain way that he wanted them to dress he has a we even think they have secret handshakes bizarre the surrounding towns people eventually came to mistrust with the diagrams so much that they burn they're building and drove them out of town so there's a dark side to the story of Pythagoras but there's also some really important history as well it's great he likes knowledge she likes geometry and astronomy and all that kind of stuff just like some people across the sea did and so when I was a young man he spent Summers early years in Egypt and this is where the story gets really interesting so it maybe was a little study abroad program that he went on we don't really know exactly but we know Pythagoras travel to Egypt study with the Egyptians came back and brought what he learned to grease and that's probably part of how we became so popular as a teacher when he was in Reno that he probably observed the best builders in the world at that time these Egyptians knew how to build really impressive buildings in fact some of their buildings still stand today the parents write the Great Pyramids of now not every building that they Egyptians built was pyramid-shaped a lot of their buildings had regular walls that went straight up and down like most of our walls do today so I want you to think about this if you are an Egyptian construction worker 2500 years ago and it was your job to make a wall perfectly upright not 91° not 89 1/2 degrees cuz you're one of the best builders in the in the whole world that time you know how to build buildings really good you don't have any modern tools or technology how are you going to make sure that that wall is perfectly right perfectly upright perfectly 90° how did they do it well the tool that they used and we think the Congress observe them doing this and it got him real serious was actually just a simple rope and so I wrote today to show you how do You Gyptian made 90° angles as you can see I have a rope here and if I were to Canvas rope over to you and let you inspect this rope what you would see is that this road has one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 equal segments so why are the knots like a ruler to Mark different segments of the roof Tech that's crazy how is this going to help you make a wall stand up straight this is the amazing thing this is the fast this is what we think Pythagoras observe the Egyptians doing that got his mind racing and it really changed the world here's how the Egyptians used a rope to make 90 degree angles take the two ends of the railroads and they would put them together see if I can get them to hold here and then they would say one two three four segments of the Rope count one two three more segments of the rope and tell me how the Egyptians figured out but that would always make a right triangle and if it's a right triangle you got yourself a right angle right here and you can do that on the ground with your bricks as you are building up the wall how to make sure that your bricks were stacked right and that's how the Egyptians built really good and that's how three four five what's a right triangle the four segments that you can go for down three across it would work either way you can test this at home if you want to take that rope take that measurement four five always makes a right triangle is the Tigris was like Wow for 5 and you went back to Greece and you wondered and he even downhill the Wonder with him what is it the magical about 3 4/5 maybe numbers I forgot to tell you that his followers believe in fact that you can kind of worship numbers weird Gio's and this isn't like a ratio exactly with two numbers compared but it's kind of like a three number ratio they likes to compare sweets other like the string length of their instruments that made these beautiful sounds they thought the numbers could create Beauty in this somehow Harmony in the universe was tied to these numbers numbers and it was kind of busy to us but to them it seemed Perfectly Natural soap for Pythagoras to discover that was beyond fascinating as a wondered would 1/2 3 work 2 3 4 work would 79 work how else could we build right triangles out of 3 numbers well I guess we're where ancient Greek people 2500 years ago the only choice we have we can't Google it you just got to draw triangles with different side lengths and see if they make a right triangle so they tried one two three you can try if you want to give it a try but sometimes it didn't even make a triangle sometimes play Tribe they tried 1 2 4 5 6 7 that's even work and every time they tried and failed they thought 345 was even more magical and special they got real crazy and just started testing every combination of numbers they could 1722 29 it didn't work either and so everyday triangles and trying to make them right triangles and trying to figure out what numbers were almost all the time there were numbers that work for some reason 5-12-13 did make a right turn 1160 61 weird and interesting and 13 8485 did make a right triangle mm how many sales they were probably before they actually were but eventually they kept alive all the triples that didn't work at all the triples that did work what did they do with that information it was still a mystery why did the one fail fail and why did the ones that work or what's going on their mystical approach to numbers and made them think that there was something maybe behind the scenes going on here so I want you to see if you can figure out what's the mystery why does 3 4 5 always work why does 5 12-13 make a right triangle why doesn't 5 6 7 make a right triangle is there any way to crack the code in to the mystery of these Pythagorean triples that did work versus all the other tripled that didn't work so think about that tomorrow if you're lucky maybe I'll give you the answer have a great day thanks for listening and watching

Uploaded by Jeff Marbut.

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The Pythagoras Story

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