Synopsis
Produced by the BBC for the British Open University Extracts the fundamental properties of two situations to reveal the basic axioms of a group. The first situation studies the rotations, flips, and their combinations needed to sort envelopes in an automated post office, and leads to a group table. The second situation studies the symmetrics of a triangle with corresponding rotations and flips, and also leads to a group table. J. Jaworski. From the Mathematics: A Foundation series
Uploader's description on archive.org
Details
- Running time
- 26 minutes
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Educational Films, Ephemeral Films
Subjects on the Internet Archive
- Group theory
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★★ · A lot to unpack. · NSEC · 2026-05-30
I think it's fair to say that the designers of post office franking machines didn't need group theory to work it out, non the less it's incredible to see the effort put in by the producers of this show. I didn't realise post office machinery was so clever! It reminds me of Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu, the wonderful film by David Loeb Weiss documenting the last day of hot metal typesetting at the New York Times. Talking of film it's evident that these Open University programs were filmed on film and these films were developed, edited, and played 'live' for television broadcast [magnetic media was…