4 Stories About Brilliant Professors

[Music] there are 43 quintillion possible combinations now imagine you have no websites no books and no one to show you how to solve it because you invented it but you didn't invent the rubik's cube this guy did my name is anaerobic was born here in this beautiful city of Budapest it was 1974 30 year-old Erno Rubik was just beginning his career in academia I was lecturing design and architecture very similar in age with the students it was very ambitious to find new ways to teach them especially about space and three dimension I made a cube as a teaching gate and for my son learn something from it once the physical cube was put together ernõ began hunting for its secrets the question was not it is possible to solve it but the question was it is possible to find a method to do that there is 26 small cubes it looks the same but in the structure of the cube they have different rules ernõ racked his brain first strategy twisting and turning the cube in his hands and his head to unlock his creation after I started to understand the nature of this action the movement I found a way for a solution it's not that straight way and after a month he cracked the code but the story doesn't end there I had the feeling the potential of the object I found it very simple to manufacture and the result of that it can be an object what is available for everyone in 1980 Erna would finally bring his cube to the world and from there it took off becoming one of the best-selling toys of all time because of the content of the cube the world discovered is not a gadget it's something that is more valuable more long life and after almost 40 years Rubik's Cube has seen a comeback with hundreds of competitions every year across the world for Erno the cube that bears his name is more than just a toy it's a reminder to never give up there is always way for a solution at all their way to find something else something new something different or final result of you if today is not everything is good it's a mean tomorrow can not be better depend on you [Music] a legend around this chalk is that it's impossible to write a false theorem I assume the special ingredients where's angel tears mathematicians from all the top schools very frequently is it it's a cult favorite as soon as I use it I was a convert the chalk is one of the best-kept secrets in the math world it's the rolls-royce of chalk hagoromo is a brand of Japanese chalk the way it flows on a board is a bit hard to describe in words it's really hard to get only get it from Japan you need a Japanese person to bring it back for you I discovered it when I went to visit the University of Tokyo and one of the professor's there said to me you know we have better chalk than you do in the States and I said oh go on chalk his chalk and so I tried it out and I was surprised to find that he was right I tried it I thought was phenomenal it's the densest it erases the cleanest that leaves the nicest line if you use bad chalk often you've depressed really hard for anyone to see what you're writing so using hagoromo on a good board it doesn't really feel like you're working hard to write when I'm teaching I get a feeling of energy confidence and the chalk absolutely helps slowly the math world has become aware of this and it became a bit of a fad in some circles it was like maybe four years ago the word came out that the company was going out of business I sort of jokingly referred to it as a chalk apocalypse so I immediately started hoarding up as much as I could i order three boxes of hagoromo and kept in my office and used it very sparingly I should have bought more but I have friends that bought boxes and boxes and boxes of the stuff they might very well be set for the rest of their career without like 1506 that's a lot of days for six a day I think I'm gonna make it I have probably a ten year supply still at home I calculated how many boxes what I need to last for 10 or 15 years I didn't want to become a chalk dealer but I did like the idea that I could be the first stick is free chalk dealer on the block in my department I was probably selling it regularly to maybe eight to ten colleagues I would reach into my cupboard in my office and pull out another box and we do the deal in my office that we all had a chalk fix and we still do the original hygroma chalk is slowly disappearing a few years ago a Korean company bought their formulas and did the best job of faithfully reproducing and agree there was mixed emotions I was happy to know that it would still be made but I was a little disappointed that I was less clever than I thought I was in many ways mathematics is like craftsmanship in some ways it's like artistry in some ways it's like science but there's a real car aft side to giving a beautiful lecture on a blackboard mathematicians admire this in each other and like to use the best tools for it there's incredible value to this but the value isn't using it up not hoarding it [Music] so there's a direct correlation between taste and sight you see something that looks delicious your mouth begins to water you see something sour you pucker but what about sound as it turns out sound has a direct effect on how your food tastes oh I'm hungry this concept is being studied by Professor Charles Burns I'm an experimental psychologist and a gastro physicist the research is in two parts part one we've found that on the one hand people match music and instruments and pictures of sounds to different tastes and flavors and food and drink so listening to a musical scale you might say this twizzler tastes like in a note and these pretzels taste like a G note and part two we then play matching music that kind of corresponds to what you're tasting you can use that to bring out and actually change people's experience of sweetness of flavor in the food and drinks that they are consuming just like you can pair wine with cheese Spence says that you can pair music with wine Tchaikovsky string quartets low-pitched sounds kind of rumbling Vitamix better to sort of a heavy red wine to bring out a bitterness whereas Mozart's flute concerto it's a much better match for certain white wines showing that we can bring out the sweetness he actually calls it sonic seasoning and while music has now been proven to accentuate flavor it can also dull it loud background noises actually dull are salty and sweet taste receptors think about that next time you served peanuts and pretzels on an airplane souls of the sweet taste do tend to be suppressed by that background noise the one flavour sense however that's not impacted umami this is savory think tomatoes beef carrots soy when you get on the airplane it's amazing how many people order tomato juice and Bloody Marys the umami taste is one that is not suppressed by live noise like it's an interesting concept and in the very least the next time you go out to eat I guarantee you'll pay just a little more attention to the music that's playing in the background chemistry explains literally everything that is happening around you the drive is taking the thermal energy from the water unfortunately I instantaneously get judged on appearance that is very frustrating for me so I'm gonna pick up my hot water when I come over here and I'm going to throw it right into my bucket okay it means I have to work harder but at the end it is so so incredibly worth it and one [Music] my name is dr. Katie Bergdorf and I am a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin I'm trying to break the stigma of what a stereotypical scientist looks like so my thing is I am NOT wearing a bowtie I'm not wearing suspenders I don't have some frumpy cardigan on I'm just some regular girl who likes to play with fire I also really like designer shoes and that's okay as the alginate hits the calcium chloride the alginate would prefer to be with the two plus charge calcium instead of the one plus charge sodium and what happens is we form gummy worms doesn't matter what you look like any human can be a scientist I definitely try to use energy and excitement I do my best to try to reach students that might be intimidated by science I use anything that will make the four hundred and eighty three students sit up straight and actually listen to the words coming out of your mouth as soon as I've exploded something in their face I have their attention for just 60 seconds and I can do whatever I can to shove that knowledge right into their brains okay so what we're gonna do today is doing some chemistry we're gonna do three different hands-on experiments I find chemistry to be an incredibly challenging topic I'm so sick of the stereotypical female scientists and we can do things other than biology by the way chemistry physics engineering we can do it the fact that I've been able to master it but then use science to start the conversation but then physically stand there and break that image it's the most rewarding thing I could ever do ever [Music]

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 346,292

Rating: 4.9143777 out of 5

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, professor, student, teacher, school, learning, chalk, chemestry, rubik's cube, solve, stereotype, New Releases, Biography & Profile, Biography, Profile, Tech & Science, Tech, Science, Great Big Reels

Id: Tdr9wxG57oc

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019