Week 2 - Math + Art

I have never realized how close Math and Art could relate to each other until reading and viewing this week’s materials. I was especially amazed by the idea of “de-genius” which basically says that every one has some talents in each field including both arts and sciences until we get specialized by modern education.

https://m.everythingmaths.co.za/science/grade-11/03-atomic-combinations/images/9cb932e7347e5f16579c1abd0be57415.jpg

 Just as the professor mentioned in the video, the curriculum at my high school called IB (International Baccalaureate) was that kind of system that divides arts and sciences into different sections. Since I had no interest and talent in arts, I took another language as the replacement for the arts part. So i had been disconnected to learning arts systematically for a long time. However, arts has never been away of my life. For example, when studying Chemistry, we were required to memorize and draw the molecular shapes of molecules which are referred as molecular geometry according to the arrangement of electrons as electrons are repelling each other. Different numbers of pairs of electrons can cause various shapes of molecules. It was always a struggle for me to figure how a 3D model of a molecule should look. I totally agree with the common saying that the basis of Chemistry is Physics while the basis of Physics is Math, while math can be related to art in many scenarios.

https://100scifimovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/music-from-the-matrix-album.jpg



 The last portion of the video reminded me of a movie called The Matrix which I believe a lot of people have watched for several times. In the movie, there is a scene where from the protagonist’s perspective, the world is constructed by numbers and data in a binary code system since the world is not real. (There’s even a character called Binary.)That was very impressive to me since usually artists use shapes and colors to depict the world. This new perspective challenged my thought of the distinction of math and arts. If we can use numbers to represent colors, does that mean math and arts are actually identical to some extent?


https://subliminalspaces.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/thematrix.jpg


Sources:
Pienar, Arno. “The Binary Code of the Matrix and the Power of the ‘Machine’”. The Event Chronicle. http://www.theeventchronicle.com/metaphysics/metascience/the-binary-code-of-the-matrix-and-the-power-of-the-machine/#. Accessed 14 April 2017.

Gelder, John. “Molecular Geometry”. OSU Chemistry. http://intro.chem.okstate.edu/1314F00/Lecture/Chapter10/VSEPR.html. Accessed 14 April 2017.

“The Matrix (9/9) Movie CLIP - A World Without You (1999) HD”. Youtube, uploaded by Movieclips, 26 May 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOg9IcxuV2g

"R. Buckminster Fuller." BrainyQuote. Xplore Inc, 2017. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/rbuckmins113329.html. Accessed 14 April 2017.

“Binary.” Fandom. http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Binary. Accessed 14 April 2017.




Comments

  1. UnknownApril 16, 2017 at 6:35 PM

    While my high school did not follow the same IB system, I also observed how the student body became divided based on art and science interests. Science and math students hung out together, while the artistic students spent most of their free time within the art classrooms of my high school. I like how you mentioned the ball-and-stick models in chemistry! As a chemical engineering major at UCLA, I sometimes hear people say that chemistry is more of an art than a science. After this week's lesson, I hope you agree that this field of study is more accurately a combination of both!

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