When eating pizza, New Yorkers will recommend that you fold the slice in half longways to reduce mess. Now find out about the math and physics working behind the scenes of that tradition in TED Ed’s Pizza physics (New York-style) by Colm Kelleher, animation by Joel Trussell.

We wish that all of our foods explained related math and physics ideas to us… and more about shapes, too.

via SciAm’s Video of the Week.

Math + 80s glamrock = Angle Dance. The rock group “Plane Geometry” singsplains angles in this clip from Children’s Television Workshop’s Square One Television, a show dedicated to teaching math. It ran from 1987 to 1992 (if that timeframe wasn’t already very, very clear from the video).

There’s more math in the archives. 

Thanks, Leigh.

Mathematical calculations created with touch and sound… and the help of an Arduino board, contact microphones and solenoids. The Knock Knock was designed by Khalil Klouche as a concept for the “Touch!” exhibition at Lausanne’s Museum of Design and Contemporary Art (MUDAC) in 2012. 

Knock on the different operators and it knocks back the answer. Watch. And then check out more inventions of one kind or another.

via Design Boom.

And now it’s time for 3+ minutes of jazz and tiny hailstones. From Aatish Bhatia at Empirical Zeal, “The Universal laws behind growth patterns, or what Tetris can teach us about coffee stains.”

As I watched this miniature world self-assemble on my windshield like an alien landscape, I wondered about the physics behind these patterns. I learned later that these patterns of ice are related to a rich and very active current area of research in math and physics known as universality. The key mathematical principles that belie these intricate patterns lead us to some unexpected places…

Observe this quiet, growing collection of ice particles on its own, or read on for a much deeper discussion of universality that includes diagrams, videos, and animated gifs.

Related quiet particle observation: Dust particles dance to a Radiohead cover. 

The very catchy Counting by Fives from Schoolhouse Rock!