Film and Video Resources

Kaleidoscopic films resulting from ‘Visualisation’

In MT206 Geoff Faux writes about Visualisation and these films resulted from a session.

Geometry and Tesselation Films

These are animations which have been compiled into Macromedia Flash format which you can play on your computer screen.

Click (left button) to display or (right button) to download each Flash file.

The Trevor Fletcher Films

Three films made originally by Trevor Fletcher in 16mm celluloid. They have now been converted to Flash format for free use in schools and other genuine educational contexts.

>> The Cardioid

>> Four Point Conics

>> The Simson Line

Trevor Fletcher writes

Seeing these films again after a gap of 30 years takes me on a trip down memory lane. I hope that others can still get as much fun from the geometry as I have. Computer graphics has the immense advantage that spectators can control the speed, and go back and forth as they will – also that one can make in a few minutes pieces of action that took me several months fifty years ago.

I would like to think that The Simson Line and The Cardioid both have ideas which people might like to recreate with Cabri. Indeed I have constructed a number of graphics around these themes myself.

Both of these films end up with a grand finale in which all the stops are pulled out. This is for dramatic effect and I never expected anyone to produce a careful analysis of all that was being shown!

As a result of making the films I have come to realise how strikingly beautiful the epi- and hypocycloids are, and I am quite certain that they deserve more attention then they receive in most mathematics courses. I hope that the films will do something to increase their popularity.