# Friday math movie: How does math guide our ships at sea?

By Murray Bourne, 12 Jul 2013

Around 4 centuries ago the Western powers sent explorers across the seas to find new lands they could conquer without asking anyone. It was a dangerous business, because the ship's captain often had little idea where they actually were and they ran into rocks with depressing regularity.

They needed better clocks, better measurement and above all, better mathematics.

This video gives us a quick overview of some of the key mathematical discoveries of this period - trigonometry and logarithms.

This video is one of the highly recommended 8 Math Talks to Blow Your Mind by TED.

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