Math : Coyote's Crazy Smart Science Show
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Math : Coyote's Crazy Smart Science Show
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Actor Nathaniel Arcand tells us math was used by Indigenous people for thousands of years. They counted inventories and measured shapes for buildings, lodges and temples. They added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided and some had symbols for fractions. Artist Shain Jackson shows us geometric shapes that are used in indigenous art or to make structures stable and designing houses. Circles are important in Coast Salish art, and 4 is a sacred number representing the four seasons, four stages of life and the four directions. The first indigenous person to work with NASA was Cherokee Mary G. Ross. She was hired by the Lockheed Martin Corporation to work on solving air pressure problems and she later became the world’s first indigenous engineer, working on space projects. Kai shows us amazing numbers and manoeuvres with Rubik's cubes. Ontario Métis, Dr. Shawn Desaulniers, says math helps us to understand how things work. Indigenous ancestors used geometry in art and engineered structures; tipis are the perfect shape for their purpose, and igloos and canoes are remarkable structures. Mathematicians learn from their mistakes, and algorithms are important in our lives, from food recipes to computer programs. Chickasaw Nation astronaut, John Herrington, shows us examples of math in nature; we see the Fibonacci sequence in the spirals of sunflower seed heads and shells, and the spiral is an old symbol in most indigenous cultures.
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