Part 5: Bringing Culture to the Physicists Summary and Analysis

Feynman learns about Mayan mathematics while on his honeymoon with his second wife. The only reason he makes any effort to learn this is because he is bored (his wife is there to study Mexican art—a subject in which he has little interest.) Feynman discovers many unexpected things about Mayan math—like how the Mayans determined the period of Venus with suprising accuracy.

Despite his self-professed contempt for academic study in the "cultural" areas, Feynman is asked to give a lecture on Mayan math at UCLA to bring culture to the physicists there.