Steiner's Porism: proving a cool animation

Strange circle stuff.
(Some people have commented that the audio is really low. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to fix it without re-uploading the whole video, but your feedback will be taken on board for the next video! Also to everyone begging for more content, I’m currently in the middle of university study, but I’m hoping to do my next video around the end of November.)
This video is my submission for 3blue1brown's Summer of Math Exposition 2021:
www.3blue1brown.com/blog/some1
For more videos created by others for SoME1, here's a playlist:
• Summer of Math Exposit...
Some more detail on the stereographic projection:
www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/doyle/m...
www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagor...
www.ams.org/publicoutreach/fea...
Animations were made in Manim:
www.manim.community

Пікірлер: 222

  • @JxH
    @JxH2 жыл бұрын

    13:45 "...real world applications?" Yes, arranging wire or cables within a larger circular cross section. For example, undersea power cables that might have three phases, as well as several smaller signal cables. Can be applied hierarchically !! Cheers.

  • @evanev7
    @evanev72 жыл бұрын

    I really like your tone, it reflects the bizarre "yeah I just thought this was cool" part of maths. I'm sharing this!

  • @Alorand
    @Alorand Жыл бұрын

    The verb "to pore over something" is more clearly preserved in modern English. I like to pore over proofs of Steiner's porism.

  • @mimithehotdog7836
    @mimithehotdog78362 жыл бұрын

    Using a sphere to transform circles is so satisfying .

  • @tmgrassi
    @tmgrassi2 жыл бұрын

    Oh, ok, so "porism", has nothing to do with the fact that the circles look like _pores_ ? I'm slightly disappointed. The thumbnail certainly looked like a _porous_ disk to me! But no, it turns out it's related to the English verb "to pore" instead! Well, that's still interesting. Anyway, great video! I liked your presentation a lot. As soon as you said "mapping circles to circles" I thought of Möbius transformations, which I used in a _Basic Complex Analysis_ course. But I didn't know how they related to the stereographic projection! This is great! It's also nice to see the graphical version of the tangency argument, having already proved that fact analytically. All in all, thanks for this insightful video!

  • @mueezadam8438

    @mueezadam8438

    2 жыл бұрын

    Math and bad names go hand in hand, it’s a sick world 😔

  • @kapoioBCS

    @kapoioBCS

    2 жыл бұрын

    Porism comes from the Greek word πόρισμα (porisma) meaning conclusion or corollary

  • @tmgrassi

    @tmgrassi

    2 жыл бұрын

    @@kapoioBCS Yup. Just like the verb "to pore"!

  • @d.l.7416

    @d.l.7416

    Жыл бұрын

    "to pore" is a germanic word, its not from ancient greek. but funnily enough "a pore" does apparently come from ancient greek "πορος" for passage, which is related to porism.

  • @mskiptr

    @mskiptr

    Жыл бұрын

    I was sure it will be something like _a tiling,_ but with gaps in between.

  • @sanderbos4243
    @sanderbos42432 жыл бұрын

    This was an awesome video, thank you! Nothing's more noble to pursuit than neat GIFs!

  • @antoninashachar
    @antoninashachar2 жыл бұрын

    This gave me existential dread. Thank you.

  • @andreben6224
    @andreben62242 жыл бұрын

    I love how from a simple definition of the projective complex line, we end up with such sophisticated diagrams. Homographies are so neat.

  • @akerbeltz1233
    @akerbeltz123314 күн бұрын

    This is one of the best results in Projective Geometry, really nice video.

  • @beauanasson3570
    @beauanasson35702 жыл бұрын

    I really appreciate how succinctly this video demonstrates the effectiveness of solving hard problems by first mapping them to simpler ones (in this case mapping a chain of circles of varying radii onto a chain of circles with the same radius).

  • @kapoioBCS
    @kapoioBCS2 жыл бұрын

    Porism comes from the Greek word πόρισμα (porisma) meaning conclusion or corollary!

  • @nosy-cat
    @nosy-cat2 жыл бұрын

    at 8:17, the discussion is not complete. There are two more possible places the circles can go and still be tangent to all three circles (red, blue and white): one is touching the blue and white circles at their intersection and touching the red circle on the other side (from the inside). The other one is similar, going from the red and white intersection to touch the blue circle on the other side. To make the proof complete, these cases should be ruled out, too. (Not that it's hard, I just thought this should be mentioned as well.)

  • @josephnewton

    @josephnewton

    2 жыл бұрын

    Good catch! I didn’t even notice that. To get around that you can use a similar reasoning to why no tangent circles can become separate or intersecting - if there’s a point on 3 circles in the afterimage, there must be one in the preimage.

  • @kariduanimations
    @kariduanimations2 жыл бұрын

    This is dangerously underrated

  • @garlicito
    @garlicito2 жыл бұрын

    Oh I absolutely adore your style of teaching. Image my surprise learning that this was a small channel considering that this was one of the coolest math videos I’ve seen

  • @DeclanMBrennan
    @DeclanMBrennan2 жыл бұрын

    Beautifully explained and illustrated and that's a bizarrely simple proof leaving almost all the tools in the box and just doing some careful pondering.

  • @linguamathematica2582
    @linguamathematica25822 жыл бұрын

    I feel like you took what was in my head and animated it in this video. And wow, those animations were gorgeous.

  • @isaacwalters747
    @isaacwalters7472 жыл бұрын

    You did an amazing job intuitively explaining the idea of functional continuity by the tangency preserving principle you mentioned!! Absolutely stellar

  • @nicholasandrzejkiewicz
    @nicholasandrzejkiewicz2 жыл бұрын

    Circle preserving maps in this example are one particular aspect of the field of conformal geometry, associated to the generalization of calculus with complex numbers. Yes, there are applications! Conformal geometry is an extremely important conceptual ingredient not just in modern quantum field theory, but ordinary phase transitions in everyday statistical mechanics. This should not be an indication that there is something special about our world to use it, but the ideas here are fundamental to any continuous geometry in plain mathematics.

  • @actualperson1971

    @actualperson1971

    2 жыл бұрын

    > everyday statistical mechanics Ah, yes. I sure do love my morning cup of statistical mechanics!

  • @cannonball7
    @cannonball72 жыл бұрын

    THANK YOU, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO FIND SOMETHING TO EVEN DEFINE THIS STRUCTURE FOR LIKE 6 MONTHS. I didn't even know the name of what this was called in Mathematics, thank you.

  • @chriss1331

    @chriss1331

    2 жыл бұрын

    See also: Pappus chain

  • @mrcat6433
    @mrcat64332 жыл бұрын

    This video is simply amazing!! Can't believe this didn't win. Do keep up the good work and make more math videos you are really good at this.

  • @kaiserouo
    @kaiserouo2 жыл бұрын

    I love that you actually drew that QED box in the end of the proof. I was somehow facinated everytime when I see that.

  • @davejoubert3349
    @davejoubert33492 жыл бұрын

    Thank you! I have been musing about circle and sphere packing and this has given me lots of inspiration.

  • @asthmen
    @asthmen2 жыл бұрын

    This is super ineresting, thank you!! The arguments are really clear & I love the animations. The only thing I'd add is that the function is only tangent-preserving by coincidence, because you're looking at circles. More fundamentally, what your bijective function is *really* preserving is intersections (as can be seen because this is what your proof uses). Cheers!

  • @wenhanzhou5826
    @wenhanzhou58262 жыл бұрын

    Very nice! Enjoyed the video from start to end.

  • @IntegralMoon
    @IntegralMoon2 жыл бұрын

    This is phenomenal! Great job, great explanation, I hope you keep making videos :) I'm subscribing!

  • @davielbanister7952
    @davielbanister79522 жыл бұрын

    This was awesome dude, keep it up. Love the style.

  • @truffleshuffle314
    @truffleshuffle3142 жыл бұрын

    I enjoyed this very much! Keep up the amazing work and have a wonderful day!

  • @ratdn
    @ratdn2 жыл бұрын

    Wow this was such a great video. I easily understood everything you said, really great demonstrations. I wish I could like this video 5 times because you definitely deserve it.

  • @miniwizard
    @miniwizard2 жыл бұрын

    Beautiful animations - could watch one of them on a loop for hours - in a meditative way!

  • @markawbolton
    @markawbolton Жыл бұрын

    What a wonderfull channel. I really like your voice presentation and scripting. It is clear crisp and entertaiing. To too complex and not too dumbed down.

  • @christophertinklerart2020
    @christophertinklerart20202 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for your hard work, this was illuminating

  • @theodoreastor3443
    @theodoreastor34432 жыл бұрын

    Great video! I love this particular solution using projections. My initial thought upon seeing the animation was that it looked like an optical illusion where the small circles were further away and the big ones were closer. Seeing this intuition of projections being used to solve the problem is very satisfying.

  • @chanlyelee
    @chanlyelee2 жыл бұрын

    Amazing! Thanks for sharing this great animation and ideas! Hope to see more videos from you!

  • @Daniel-fv1ff
    @Daniel-fv1ff2 жыл бұрын

    Great video mate. Would be awesome to see more

  • @BLooDCoMPleX
    @BLooDCoMPleX2 жыл бұрын

    I love the animation, you need to make more.

  • @ryanmcadams1209
    @ryanmcadams12099 ай бұрын

    dude you are like 3blue1brown but more personal I love your content

  • @Banzybanz
    @Banzybanz2 жыл бұрын

    Great video Mr. Newton. Made your ancestors proud. Beautiful use of the stereographic projection.

  • @lvcifer-616
    @lvcifer-6167 ай бұрын

    new favourite channel

  • @jayantnema9610
    @jayantnema96102 жыл бұрын

    This is so genius!!! Thanks a tonne man ❤️❤️❤️

  • @MCPhssthpok
    @MCPhssthpok2 жыл бұрын

    My guess was that you would use two circle inversions to map from the symmetric case. Now I need to go and check if that would work! Nice job with the video.

  • @a.osethkin55
    @a.osethkin552 жыл бұрын

    It s so amazing! Thank you!!!

  • @killerguppy2988
    @killerguppy2988 Жыл бұрын

    Great explanation and animations. Well done! I thought it was going to be some kinda elliptical cross section thing, and I think that's kinda what it turned out to be (I'm not to heavy on the math terms).

  • @gehteuchnichtsan7911
    @gehteuchnichtsan79112 жыл бұрын

    Incredible good animations!

  • @Ryco117
    @Ryco1172 жыл бұрын

    Very enjoyable and easy to follow. Nice work!

  • @trevorrobertsondoublebass4233
    @trevorrobertsondoublebass42332 жыл бұрын

    That animation is so beautiful...

  • @pradhyumnad7304
    @pradhyumnad73042 жыл бұрын

    this video has infiltrated the maths community and I love it, hope you see more stuff.

  • @leandrobacelar7557
    @leandrobacelar75572 жыл бұрын

    Excellent video, congratulations!

  • @BrutusAlbion
    @BrutusAlbion2 жыл бұрын

    Dude this is so cool.

  • @LucaIlarioCarbonini
    @LucaIlarioCarbonini2 жыл бұрын

    And now I need to see how circles goes from the sphere to the plane and the way back. Nice video indeed!

  • @guntherroll3106
    @guntherroll31062 жыл бұрын

    Very nice! It's a gem!

  • @dranorter
    @dranorter2 жыл бұрын

    I ended up pausing at 1:20 and trying to prove using circle inversion. Supposing we have one working example, choose one white circle, "W1". Draw a new circle "A" which inverts the white circle to itself, the red circle to itself, and additionally the blue circle to itself. Now, select a white circle, "W2", adjacent to the first, and similarly construct "B" which inverts that white circle to itself and also the red circle to itself and the blue to itself. If we reflect "W1" over "B", the resulting circle "W3" will be tangent to the red and blue circles (since those map to themselves), and also to "W2" since "W1" was tangent to "W2" (which is being mapped to itself). If we reflect "W2" over "A", the resulting circle will similarly be tangent to the red circle, the blue circle, and "W1". We can continue reflecting any new white circles over "A" or "B" (whichever one didn't generate them in the first place) to create "W4", "W5" and so on. The numbering doesn't state their spatial ordering, but as you can see, they'll form a chain since each new one will be linked to an old one. Due to their tangents, each such new circle must correspond to some white circle in the original diagram. Because the original diagram formed a loop, this process must come to an end with some finite number of white circles. Furthermore, we can invert the circles "A" and "B" over one another repeatedly to generate "C", "D", "E" etc., which are circles fixing the red and the blue circle, and additionally fixing "W3" or "W4" etc. IE, each white circle will have a corresponding circle which maps it to itself in addition to mapping blue to itself and red to itself. Allow me to name the collection of "A", "B", "C" etc., calling it "R". The thing to note about "R" is that each member is a symmetry of the entire figure, mapping it to itself. Because all the members of "R" map the whole image to itself via circle inversion, the members of "R" must all intersect at the intersection of "A" and "B", since if they didn't, it would violate the symmetry. The intersection of "A" and "B" is actually two points, one inside the red circle, and one outside the blue circle. Let's put a new circle around the second intersection point, keeping it small enough that it's entirely outside the blue circle. I'll dignify this new circle with a color - it's the green circle. If we invert all members of "R" over the green circle, something interesting happens. Because they intersect the center of the green circle, they necessarily become straight lines instead of circles. Now invert the rest of the figure - the white circles, the blue circle and the red circle - around the green circle. We know we'll end up with white circles in a chain, still tangent to the new blue and red circles. We also know our new straight lines are tangent to our new white circles. But what's really notable is that the new straight lines will be symmetries of the new white circles, since circle inversion itself preserves symmetries expressed using circle inversion. But if our new figure is symmetrical over a collection of lines, then actually, it's rotationally symmetrical, and all the circles are the same size. So if we rotate the white circles in our new figure, by any amount we want, and then use circle inversion over the green circle to map them back onto the old figure, then we get a working chain, and can create the desired animation. I like this proof because its structure is a good match for the question; the stereographic proof loses me a bit when it starts trying to show the red circle can be put anywhere. (The original stipulation was that we can choose the red circle's size, not that we can choose its distance from the edge.) However, the proof in the video gives a good sense of why any size of red circle will work, and mine doesn't. Things I omitted: Why can we construct "A" and "B"? Why can we trust that symmetries defined by circle inversion get preserved by circle inversion?

  • @o_2731
    @o_2731 Жыл бұрын

    Really cool video!

  • @michamiskiewicz4036
    @michamiskiewicz40362 жыл бұрын

    13:20 Haha, I was hoping for such an animation at the end. I'm not disappointed.

  • @giovannicaiolo5786
    @giovannicaiolo57862 жыл бұрын

    Great video, complex concepts explained easily

  • @red_rassmueller1716
    @red_rassmueller17162 жыл бұрын

    loving it! thx

  • @gilmoses3777
    @gilmoses37772 жыл бұрын

    Only one vid? I'm disappointed... looking to see some more excellent stuff coming from you!

  • @floyo
    @floyo2 жыл бұрын

    13:42 Best part xD

  • @jerryhuff4767
    @jerryhuff4767 Жыл бұрын

    Very nice mate

  • @realityChemist
    @realityChemist2 жыл бұрын

    Very interesting, I love this! I've actually spent some time doing constructions like this by hand; all of the circles beyond the third (first two are given, third one is trivial) require you to solve a special case of the Problem of Apollonius to construct them correctly (i.e. without just eyeballing it). There are 8 solutions to the problem of Apollonius in general, but the fact that some of your starting circles are already tangent to each other is going to reduce the number of solutions that exist (I think to just the two you show, but I'm not certain if there are more hiding somewhere). That last circle - which is tangent to four other circles - is a fun extra that you don't get by just solving the Problem of Apollonius; figuring out the proper construction to make it would be fun I think! The stereographic projection is also something I use a fair bit in my actual research (crystallography / TEM); always fun to see it in a new context! Bonus: if - after constructing Steiner's Porism - you solve a different special case of the Problem of Apollonius (this one has a name: the inner Soddy circle) for each of the triplets of circles in your Steiner construction, you could construct something very much like an Apollonian gasket (neat fractal). It's a little bit different though, so it needs a different name. Since the Apollonian gasket is a porous sort of thing, I propose we should call this new construction: Steiner's Porous Porism!

  • @8thguy633
    @8thguy6332 жыл бұрын

    This is definitely gonna blow up

  • @Stellar_Lake_sys
    @Stellar_Lake_sys2 жыл бұрын

    seems like this could be handy for designing eccentric ball bearings

  • @7Cetus7

    @7Cetus7

    2 жыл бұрын

    In that case the balls must slip all the time instead of rolling which would be suboptimal.

  • @WindyNight114
    @WindyNight1142 жыл бұрын

    This is very cool!

  • @pamdemonia
    @pamdemonia2 жыл бұрын

    That is sooo cool!

  • @ufffd
    @ufffd2 жыл бұрын

    this is super neat. the animations are really helpful, and satisfying. the only thing that could possibly be improved is the audio.

  • @GadolElohai
    @GadolElohai2 жыл бұрын

    This video reminded me what I loved about teaching math. I kinda miss it.

  • @smileyp4535
    @smileyp45352 жыл бұрын

    Wow this blew up for you huh? Good for you! It reminds me of 3blue1brown 😁

  • @flightmansam
    @flightmansam9 ай бұрын

    This was so damn satisfying on an OLED display

  • @achimbuchweisel2736
    @achimbuchweisel27362 жыл бұрын

    cool stuff! Good job!

  • @a52productions
    @a52productions2 жыл бұрын

    Beautiful, simple, and elegant -- both the mathematics and your explanation. Really great video on a really nice piece of math, and animated really well.

  • @UncoveredTruths
    @UncoveredTruths2 жыл бұрын

    i loved this!

  • @Michallote
    @Michallote2 жыл бұрын

    We could use this to design non-concentric planetary gears, their mass would be excentric and perhaps a neat application of this method could lead to a particular variable CAM design. As an engineer I can actually see it through an application, we would have to wonder tho if it's going to be practical enough to go through the effort of designing it

  • @yurisich
    @yurisich2 жыл бұрын

    Besides cool animations, this might be useful for stimulating fluids of various temperatures and pressures, with the clines being represented by the tangents. The absolute position of the sphere hosting the stereographic projection would be the balance between the various masses.

  • @user-xh1be6om8g
    @user-xh1be6om8g2 жыл бұрын

    Great video!

  • @imperiumgraecum9126
    @imperiumgraecum91262 жыл бұрын

    In greek math bibliography, πόρισμα (> porism) actually means corollary.

  • @huhneat1076
    @huhneat10762 жыл бұрын

    4:33 Okay how have I never stumbled upon this gem of a video sooner

  • @KatzRool
    @KatzRool2 жыл бұрын

    I feel like this would make a neat GIF

  • @josephyoung6749
    @josephyoung67492 жыл бұрын

    13:19 The neat gif we were all waiting to see

  • @CasualGraph
    @CasualGraph2 жыл бұрын

    There's some neat logic involving the incidence structure of the mobius plane hiding under some aspects of this proof. Also, treating the outer circle as the boundary of the Poincare disk, we can get a nice corollary out of this involving what radii for circles in the hyperbolic plane give rise to chains of horocycles. Really, it's neat stuff all around.

  • @tangsolaris9533
    @tangsolaris95335 ай бұрын

    holy shit it’s topology ??? This is amazing

  • @josippetkovic389
    @josippetkovic389 Жыл бұрын

    What i saw there is ideal pump, keep it up

  • @declanmoran
    @declanmoran2 жыл бұрын

    BRUH WHEN YOU ROTATED THAT SPHERE 10/10

  • @rfgaergaerg1612
    @rfgaergaerg1612 Жыл бұрын

    Great video, awesome channel. While watching i wondered if you could use this to build an excentric roller bearing. i might try it in the future

  • @hpp6116
    @hpp61162 жыл бұрын

    Very nice!

  • @kutlokenosi3116
    @kutlokenosi311611 ай бұрын

    I find the statement that something is “always or never” very funny for some reason

  • @lumipakkanen3510
    @lumipakkanen35102 жыл бұрын

    Cool video with trippy animations! Installing some acoustic foam might help with the reverb in the audio or simply recording under a blanket.

  • @playingwithstructures8691
    @playingwithstructures86912 жыл бұрын

    Amazing

  • @mohamedaymenbenabdallah67
    @mohamedaymenbenabdallah672 жыл бұрын

    I couldn't finish the video because of the sound it's too low. nice work and good explanation as far as i watched. next videos pay more attention to the sound plz. good luck!!

  • @2false637
    @2false6372 жыл бұрын

    Nice!

  • @Dannnneh
    @Dannnneh Жыл бұрын

    It was neat!

  • @Number_Cruncher
    @Number_Cruncher2 жыл бұрын

    Very nice.

  • @zachlward
    @zachlward2 жыл бұрын

    very cool

  • @lucyg00se
    @lucyg00se2 жыл бұрын

    god, what a wonderful "aha!" moment

  • @xanthoconite4904
    @xanthoconite49042 жыл бұрын

    anouther great SoME

  • @beechyuuu2297
    @beechyuuu229718 күн бұрын

    that would be a cool thing to put on a loading screen

  • @some1and297
    @some1and2972 жыл бұрын

    It's cool to have a competition thing named after me

  • @vitaminluke5597
    @vitaminluke55974 ай бұрын

    I cannot believe my wild guess that this would be a Möbius transform was correct. That's what happens when one remembers exactly one thing from complex analysis.

  • @mrscsi6472
    @mrscsi647211 ай бұрын

    disregarding all transformations, there are countably infinite arrangements of circles that link up like that, as the number of circles must be an integer.

  • @Cenitopius

    @Cenitopius

    10 ай бұрын

    Is this because, given the stereographic transformations are considered identical (from your statement "disregarding all transformations"), the number of scale factors between the red and blue circles that produce a porism (which I'm using here to refer to the pattern, not the style of proof I guess) where both share a centre point are recusively enumerable? And if so, how would you go about enumerating them, personally? I can't think how I'd approach that. I defaulted to thinking that they'd be uncountably infinite, but I can see that there's plenty of room for me to be wrong there. Definitely they're infinite, but proving which kind seems a little difficult.

  • @tophan5146
    @tophan51462 жыл бұрын

    5:13 Amazing! 🤯

  • @daniellesmeister
    @daniellesmeister2 жыл бұрын

    Another real world application would include extending the understanding of how mapping spherical geometry to the plane will unavoidably distort the shapes on the sphere no matter which translation is used (hence why the Mercator projection distorts things at the pole). This way when moving the area of interest to the South pole will minimise the distortion to what is important.

  • @ReevansElectro
    @ReevansElectro2 жыл бұрын

    Practical wire making layouts for differing sizes of wire.