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Can you solve the unstoppable blob riddle? - Dan Finkel

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  • 5,972 Questions Answered
  • TEDEd Animation

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A shooting star crashes onto Earth and a hideous blob emerges. It creeps and leaps, it glides and slides. It’s also unstoppable: no matter what you throw at it, it just re-grows and continues its rampage. The only way to save the planet is to cut the entire blob into precise acute triangles while it sleeps, rendering it inert. Can you stop the blob from destroying the planet? Dan Finkel shows how.


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TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Daniel Finkel
  • Director Igor Coric
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Animator Nemanja Petrovic
  • Producer Milica Lapcevic
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
  • Associate Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Fact-Checker Brian Gutierrez
Additional Resources for you to Explore
Imagine starting with a parallelogram instead of an obtuse triangle. What’s the minimum number of cuts to dissect this into acute triangles? In general, given any strangely drawn n-sided polygon, what’s the most number of cuts that would be required to dissect it into acute triangles?

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TED-Ed
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New York, NY

Customize this lesson

Create and share a new lesson based on this one.

About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Daniel Finkel
  • Director Igor Coric
  • Narrator Addison Anderson
  • Animator Nemanja Petrovic
  • Producer Milica Lapcevic
  • Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
  • Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
  • Associate Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
  • Fact-Checker Brian Gutierrez

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