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I love watching National Geographic and Discovery channel pieces on the universe/outer space because they are so visually appealing, but if I had to read about the topics, I wouldn't have much interest. Are there any places that have math videos that are highly CGI, that help visualize calculus concepts? (specifically, I'm in vector calc this term.) Thanks!

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The episodes of The Mechanical Universe about the derivative and integration are pretty good. (They're where I originally learned about differentiation and integration, before the BC calc course)

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    Also, this really great documentary about the birth of the calculus recently was mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObPg3ki9GOI2012-02-23
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Well, it's not exactly a "movie", but an excellent way to visualize vector calculus stuff is to play around with Mathematica and/or Maple. Both of these packages have extensive graphing/animation capabilities for all types of graphs (parametric equations, vector fields, etc.) that can reveal the nature of the vector fields/surfaces, etc. that you encounter.

See here, for an example of some "computational labs" put together for Mathematica. Although I haven't seen it, here is a book on doing vector calculus with Maple.

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    yeah I've used those, but I was looking for more of a video-style that I could watch in free time. thanks though!2012-01-24