The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle

  • 4 years ago
If this doesn't blow your mind, I don't know what will.
Part 2: https://youtu.be/jsYwFizhncE
Part 3: https://youtu.be/brU5yLm9DZM
Brought to you by you: http://3b1b.co/clacks-thanks

New to this channel? It's all about teaching math visually. Take a look and see if there's anything you'd like to learn.

NY Times blog post about this problem:
https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/pi/

The original paper by Gregory Galperin:
https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~lebed/Galperin.%20Playing%20pool%20with%20pi.pdf

Evidently, Numberphile also described this problem (I had not known):
https://youtu.be/abv4Fz7oNr0
You'll notice that video has an added factor of 16 throughout, which is not here. That's because they're only counting the collisions between blocks (well, balls in their case), and they're only counting to the point where the big block starts moving the other way.

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These animations are largely made using manim, a scrappy open source python library: https://github.com/3b1b/manim

If you want to check it out, I feel compelled to warn you that it's not the most well-documented tool, and it has many other quirks you might expect in a library someone wrote with only their own use in mind.

Music by Vincent Rubinetti.
Download the music on Bandcamp:
https://vincerubinetti.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-of-3blue1brown

Stream the music on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1dVyjwS8FBqXhRunaG5W5u

If you want to contribute translated subtitles or to help review those that have already been made by others and need approval, you can click the gear icon in the video and go to subtitles/cc, then "add subtitles/cc". I really appreciate those who do this, as it helps make the lessons accessible to more people.

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