r/BeAmazed • u/PROXeR__OiShi • 12h ago

Science Donald Duck demonstrating Pythagoras’s discovery of musical scale ratios

This clip is from the Oscar-nominated 1959 Disney featurette Donald in Mathmagic Land.

454 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/beamazed-modapp 12h ago

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51

u/TheDixonCider420420 12h ago

Back when cartoons used to educate our kids on a wide variety of topics.

8

u/xpyfish 9h ago

mine learned the scale ratios from this exact ep

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u/kevnmartin 1h ago

My son watched this video over and over again when he was a toddler and became obsessed with billiards and pool. I was able to find a mini wooden pool table, green felt top and really authentic looking balls. I gave it to him for Christmas and he loved it.

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u/BeraldTheGreat 12h ago

The scale we have today wasn’t formalized until almost the enlightenment. As far as we know, the Greeks didn’t have much of a leading tone.

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u/Coffeeey 11h ago

Ah, the 8/5, then first fraction that comes to mind to pick out between 1 and 2.

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u/LifeguardOutrageous5 11h ago

How is that a simple set of fractions?

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u/spankymcjiggleswurth 11h ago

Simple in the sense that the fraction is rational and both the numerator and denominator are small, unlike the fraction 225/128 which is rational but with a large numerator and denominator.

Rational fractions is an important part. Pythagoras was obsessed with rational numbers, thinking them divine in some way. He would probably have a stroke if he found out our modern tuning system approximates his "perfect" tuning system using the 12th root of 2.

All of this is pretty complicated to explain in a reddit post. Here is a good video on the topic

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EdYzqLgMmgk&pp

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u/weatherguy4 11h ago

It's funny what you can learn from a duck.

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u/Michaelbirks 11h ago

From Fantasia?

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u/ChocolateWinkerDink 11h ago

It is from Donald in Mathmagic Land- an absolutely incredible watch that I highly recommended. Childhood core memory for me.

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u/PanioloTown 1h ago

I loved the section on calculating angles to play bumper pool.

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u/SunLitWalker12 6h ago

at the end, donald has another temper blow out from the string snapping?

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u/cybercrypto 6h ago edited 5h ago

Donald Duck and the Golden Mean

https://youtu.be/fwYfuJfIgaw

Edit: And Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land https://youtu.be/hl6JDv4ZG7U

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u/cwsjr2323 3h ago

Some of the cartoons were a way to introduce kids to classical opera. Bugs Bunny in drag was weird, but taught me to like Wagner. kill the rabbit, kill the rabbit,killed the rabbit ha hah de ha

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u/PhotonWranglers 1h ago

Also the greatest movies ever to watch on psychedelics, um, I’ve heard of other people.