What is the most motivating way to introduct Pythagorean triples to undergraduate students? I am looking for an approach that will have an impact. Good interesting or real life examples will help. Is there any resources for this?
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$\begingroup$ There's many applications on wikipedia. $\endgroup$– user5402Aug 28, 2018 at 15:25
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$\begingroup$ math.stackexchange.com/q/1333390/81595 $\endgroup$– user5402Aug 28, 2018 at 15:26
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2$\begingroup$ Aubry's beautiful geometrical generation of the Pythagorean triples tree is worth mention. It can be understood by beginners yet leads the way to much deeper ideas connecting number theory and geometry (reflective lattices). $\endgroup$– Bill DubuqueAug 28, 2018 at 17:29
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$\begingroup$ I have added the (undergraduate-education) and (number-theory) tags. If you feel that either tag is inappropriate, please feel free to roll back my edit or change the tags to ones that fit better. Just trying to make your question easier to find by those who might be interested in it. $\endgroup$– J WAug 29, 2018 at 10:41
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I saw this video a long time ago, I thought it was interesting. The talk is aimed to be a talk about one of the Millenium Problems but aimed at a general audience (so undergrads should understand/follow it). It is the first a in series about connecting Congruent Number Problem to the BSD Conjecture, and the 2nd video in the series describes the idea of generating Pythagorean Triples to help find Congruent Numbers.
This video Might be a bit elementary for Undergrad, but it demonstrates a way to program Excel to find Pythagorean Triples for you by using Brute Force. The follow up video shows the algebraic manipulations to generate all the primitive triples.
