Welcome Families! This month, we are stepping into the digital world. If your children love playing video games or watching animated blockbusters, they are actually engaging with some of the most advanced applied mathematics on the planet.
In this edition, we are exploring how programmers, animators, and studio executives use math to build immersive 3D worlds and run massive entertainment businesses.
- Every 3D character, vehicle, or castle you see on screen is actually hollow. They are made of a "wireframe" mesh consisting of thousands of individual data points. Each point has its own (x, y, z) coordinate defining exactly where it sits in a 3D grid space.
- To make a character run, fly, or swing a sword, programmers apply mathematical rules to instantly translate (move), rotate, and scale those thousands of coordinate points across the screen up to 60 times every second.
- Game engines use equations for velocity, acceleration, and force. If a racing car slams into a wall, the math dictates exactly how fast it should bounce backward and how much damage it takes.
- Animators use equations to simulate the effects of wind blowing through a character’s hair, the way soft fabric folds, and how light vectors bounce to create realistic shadows and reflections.
- Video games run algorithms in the background to handle the automatic awarding, tabulation, and tracking of points, achievements, and player statistics in real time.
- A movie usually needs to make 2 to 3 times its total production budget just to break even. Studios use math to manage these massive multi-million dollar budgets.
Family Math Challenges: Try This At Home!
Step behind the scenes of your favourite media with these playful family math challenges. Pick the one that fits your child's age group.
Primary
Turn a simple physical activity into a video game! Set up a laundry basket and some rolled-up socks. Assign different point values to different distances (e.g., a close shot is 2 points, a medium shot is 5 points, a far shot is 10 points). Give your child 5 chances to throw, and have them tabulate their score as they go. Ask, "If you missed the 10-point shot but made three 5-point shots, what is your total? How many different ways can you combine your points to reach exactly 20?"
Junior
On a piece of graph paper, have your child draw and label a Cartesian plane (or create a grid on the floor using painter's tape). Place an object at a point on the grid and ask your child to identify the coordinates of its position. Challenge your child to use mathematical transformations (translations, rotations, and reflections) to move the object to a new spot.
Intermediate
You don't need a computer to think like a software coder! Game developers use "conditional logic" to program how characters move and score points. Challenge your child to write a "code script" on a piece of paper for a fictional video game character using Variables, Loops, and If/Then Statements. For example, they could write out a sequence ruleset like this:
Set Variable: PlayerHealth = 100
Repeat Loop (3 times): Walk forward 5 steps, then jump.
If Player touches a spiked obstacle, Then subtract 25 from PlayerHealth.
If PlayerHealth reaches 0, Then trigger Game Over.
Alternatively, they could create a code with a nested loop (a loop inside a loop) to make their character do a dance routine.