Daydream about the Figure Eight with jazz vocalist Blossom Dearie and some help from renowned Schoolhouse Rock composer Bob Dorough, in this 1973 Multiplication Rock animated short.
The educational series put the multiplication tables to music, along with quirky, number-filled scenes, infused short and catchy math lessons into the era’s kid-focused Saturday morning television programming.
“Figure eight as double four.
Figure four as half of eight.
If you skate, you would be great,
If you could make a figure 8.
That’s a circle that turns ’round upon itself.”
As the song builds, the animation visualizes multiplication by eights in fun ways, including an octopus, periscopes with peeking eyes, jumping fish, balloons, a polar bear, and a blimp. Then “place it on its side and it’s a symbol meaning infinity.”
Watch these Schoolhouse Rock videos next:
• The Four-Legged Zoo: Multiplication by 4
• Counting by Fives
• Verb: That’s What’s Happening (1974)
• Telegraph Line (Nervous System), a 1979 Schoolhouse Rock animation
Bonus: Place Value Song: Ones, Tens, and Hundreds.
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