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Video Description:
Donald in Mathmagic Land was released on June 26, 1959.
It was directed by Hamilton Luske and is 27 minutes in length. In 1959, it was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Documentary - Short Subjects). The film was made available to schools and became one of the most popular educational films ever made by Disney. As Walt Disney explained, "The cartoon is a good medium to stimulate interest.
We have recently explained mathematics in a film and in that way excited public interest in this very important subject."
Topics explained
See also: Teaching
Geometry 2/3,
Teaching Geometry 3/3,
Geometry
for Children
Walt Disney Mini Classics: Donald in Mathmagic Land a.k.a. Donald in Mathmagic Land
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Director: Hamilton Luske
DVD
This Oscar-nominated featurette is a typically felicitous Disney
combination of music and live action. In search of big game, hunter
Donald Duck stumbles into a strange and wonderous land dominated by
numbers: numbers on the ground, numbers in the trees, numbers in the
river, even numbered footprints left behind by a walking pencil. The
offscreen voice of The Spirit of Adventure informs Donald that he is in
Mathmagic Land, immediately dispelling the duck's dismissive attitude
that mathematics is "egghead stuff" by immediately highlighting the
correlation between math and music. We then travel back in time to
Pythagoras, who uses mathematical equations to produce the most
beautiful of music. He also disovers the "mathmagic" in the pentagram
and the golden rectangle, which can mathematically reproduce itself
indefinitely, and is also the foundation of all architecture and
scupture. Much to Donald's fascination, he learns that mathematics can
even apply to the shapes of nature, from a starfish to a tree, and to
such common everyday game as chess, baseball, football, basketball and
billiards. Finally, there's the most exciting "game" of all: the shape
of things that are discovered and formulated in the human mind. Hal
Erickson, All Movie Guide
Scene Index
Disc #1 -- Donald In Mathmagic Land
1. Very Strange [2:46]
2. The Time of Pythagoras [4:29]
3. The Golden Rectangle [3:55]
4. Mathematical Forms In Nature [2:25]
5. Mathematics In Games [8:36]
6. Mathematical Thinking [5:17].

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