WEBVTT

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Hi. Last week, we explored how math opens the

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door to truth. And sometimes, truth can feel

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serious, heavy. But there's another side to it.

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Sometimes, truth is beautiful. Something that

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draws us in. Something we want to explore. And

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this week, we're going to see that side of math.

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Okay, I have nine grandchildren. And one thing

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I love about them is not only are they the cutest

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kids around, but they are naturally curious.

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They remind me that learning does not always

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have to feel serious. So this week is an invitation

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to approach math with that same playful, childlike

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curiosity. This week, our focus is prime numbers.

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So let's begin with a simple why question. Why

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study the primes? It seems like most great ideas

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come from one of two places, need or curiosity.

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Some ideas solve problems. Yes, we need bridges,

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medicine, technology. But other ideas do not

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come from need at all. They come from curiosity,

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from wonder. People have spent centuries studying

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it, finding new depth, new meaning, new beauty.

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Prime numbers are like that. They were not invented.

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They were discovered thousands of years ago.

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Yep, and here we are today, still exploring them.

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Why? Let's imagine we did not know anything about

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primes. or just playing with rocks, trying to

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arrange them into rows and columns. Something,

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I guess, interesting, or maybe fascinating, perhaps

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strange, happens. Some numbers form rectangles

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easily, but others refuse. Five rocks, seven

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rocks, thirteen rocks. No matter how you arrange

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them, they will not form a perfect rectangle.

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Those are our prime numbers. This is what I call

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a low score. Low meaning even a child can discover

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this just by playing. But here's the crazy cool

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part. Even though the idea is simple, we still

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do not fully understand the primes. Mathematicians

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have studied prime numbers for thousands of years.

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And yet, the more we find, we find we know so

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little. That is the high ceiling. Easy to begin,

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impossible to finish. At first, primes feel like

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just a list. Two, three, five, seven, eleven.

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But over time, something moves or changes. It

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is less like looking at a list and more like

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stepping into a world. Like in Narnia from a

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C .S. Lewis novel. You open a door expecting

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something small and find something vast. The

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deeper you go, the more it feels like these numbers

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aren't just things we created, but something

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we've discovered. Something. with its own structure,

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its own mystery. Prime numbers are not a solution

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to a problem. They are an invitation, an invitation

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to explore, to notice, to wonder. So this week,

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let's try something a little different. As we

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move from the floor to the ceiling of prime numbers,

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let's look at math. not just for what it can

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do for us, but for what it is. Let's discover

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math that is interesting in itself. In doing

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so, we may experience a new side of what math

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truly is.