The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle
3Blue1Brown 3Blue1Brown
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 Published On Jan 13, 2019

Solution:    • Why do colliding blocks compute pi?  
Even prettier solution:    • How colliding blocks act like a beam ...  
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Special thanks to these supporters: 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/20...

The original paper by Gregory Galperin:
https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~lebed/Galpe...

Evidently, Numberphile also described this problem (I had not known):
   • Pi and Bouncing Balls - Numberphile  
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.

Thanks to these viewers for their contributions to translations
Bengali: Prayas Sanyal
Hebrew: Omer Tuchfeld
Italian: @Deye27, @hi-anji

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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/a...

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

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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3blue1brown is a channel about animating math, in all senses of the word animate. And you know the drill with YouTube, if you want to stay posted on new videos, subscribe: http://3b1b.co/subscribe

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