Science Documentary 2016: The Math Mystery Mathematics in Nature and

Universe

Summary and Reflection

Dominic P. Sanchez

Math is all around us, whether in the phone we are using today, the cracks within our
walls and even in the lines we see at the corner of our room, there is math. The
informational video that I have watched states that math is really all around us.For
example is the fibonacci number sequence which was discovered by Leonardo Pisano
Bigollo. It can be seen from the spirals of a snail and even the spirals of a sunflower to
the the spirals of a universe. It is also seen mostly in the field of botany, an example is the
in the number of petals in daisies and number of bumps in a pine cone.

One of the greatest discoveries is the pi (approx. 3.14). It shows the ratio of a circle’s
circumference to its diameter. But that is not all there is, pi can be also seen in
probabilities. If you take a needle and fall it to a paper with lines that has the interval of
the needles length, the probability of it falling passing the line is 2/pi. Pi can be also seen
on waves, what colors would the rainbows be and even on apples. Max Tegmark,
described and imagined that our mathematical universe as a life in a computer game,
where all is there are just numbers and equations that are used to program the world. He
said that, “Our physical world doesn’t just have some mathematical properties but has
only mathematical properties”, which is pretty logical to believe in as math is really all
around us.

Greek mathematicians like Pythagoras has said that even in music, there is math. He
discovered that those musical relationships were also beautiful mathematical relationships.
The proportion of the strings you play differs in octaves, fifths and fourths which are all
proportional. And simple ratio and proportions is also all around us, from the 1:2 ration of
the hydrogen and oxygen in water to the moon that orbits the earth to its own rotation
which is 1:1. Another mathematician is Plato, who proposed the platonic solids which
represents different elements. He described earth which is stable as cube, tetrahedron that
has pointy corners as fire, octahedron which looks mobile as air, icosahedron as water,
and dodecahedron as the entire cosmos/ the universe. Aristotle said that the heavier the
object is, the faster it will fall, but it is proven wrong by Galileo Galilei. He tested an
experiment with 2 balls in different sizes which are dropped at a height and it has fallen
on the same time. To go further, he discovered that the falling action accelerates the
longer it goes. He discovered that the distance traveled is proportional to the square of
time.

Isaac Newton , which is born the same year Galileo has died, has a breaking insight
which is very fundamental to our world of physics to this very day, he discovered the
force that sent a comet around the sun is the same force that send cannon balls back to
earth. It is gravity. He discovered the formula for it through timeless gathering of data all
around the globe to formulate it. It is the same law that applies to all within our universe.

Another section of the video shows that people and some animals has the primitive
numerical sense which makes us instinctively know how to count. A study was performed
at lemurs where there is a screen that shows objects and they have to choose the least of
the two choices. If it correct, they will be given a prize, but if not, it will not be available
for a few moments. It shows that lemurs can learn math, not only them but also in some
animals such as birds, horses and even in some fishes. The same experiments are done to
humans, but they are tasked to answer as fast as possible without counting. And the
results are almost the same with animals, which Liza Brannon has said, “All of us has a
primitive number sense”.

The video has fascinated me and opened my mind that math is not just found on what
we write on paper and use in a calculator. It showed me that math is literally everywhere.
I can really see it everywhere even in predicting the weather. From the subatomic
particles to the celestial bodies in the cosmos. A question that was posed in the video is
that “Is math really all around us? Or is it a product of our human mind”. And I agree
with the answer of Mario Livio, author of “Is God a Mathematician?” He said that it is
both, math is all around us in a sense that we discovered it and its is a product of our
mind in a sense that we invented it, so it is both discovered and invented. We invented the
concepts and we discovered the related things within the collection of those concepts.
Because in the end, it is math that brought us what we have now, and without the concept
of it, we may not have the breakthroughs and discoveries in the nature of our world, and
even in our own universe.