Crop Circles
Being a kid growing up who was deathly scared of even the idea of extra-terrestrial life and aliens, crop circles where something that I remember trying my hardest to put out of my mind as per evidence and proof of those dreaded beings that haunted me in my sleep. Only as I got older (admittedly I still think E.T. and ?his/her? buddies are on a different level of creepy) did I start to find the notions of intelligent life outside our universe to be really fascinating. And, after finding out that crop circles were of this world, not only was I able to sleep easier but I was also able to see a result of all those damn math classes which coincidentally also kept me from sleeping soundly at night.
Crop circles are the product of a small group of people who literally stamp out geometric patterns typically based on a specified axis in your every day farm field, grain crops such as wheat are ideal for crop circles. "Crop circle designs are constructed from circular arcs and straight lines. Even the more complex crop circles, including those made to look like Mandelbrot sets, or the head of Mickey Mouse ©, conform to this rule. All crop circles can be constructed using the standard methods of Euclidean geometry. This should tell us something. The aliens making these drawings must be using ungraduated rulers and compases."(D. Simanek, www.lhup.edu, 2002)
Interestingly not-so-basic designs created using basic mathematical principles with an interesting social twist, sounds like the stuff that cheesy movies are made of.