Blog

A blog of Python-related topics and code.

The Kapitska pendulum

The Kapitza pendulum is an inverted pendulum that can balance stably when driven by an oscillating vertical displacement. As with previous posts, the position of the pendulum bob with time can be described using Lagrangian mechanics. In a coordinate system with the pendulum anchor driven vertically around (0,0) and the y-axis pointing up, the components of the bob position and velocity as a function of time are:

How wet was Cambridge in February?

Just a quick (20 min) analysis of the rainfall in Cambridge in February since 1996 to see how wet it has been compared with previous years. Data are taken from the amateur-maintained weather station on the roof of the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory.

The Kelvin wake pattern

An object (ship, duck, etc.) travelling across the surface of water at a constant velocity $\boldsymbol{u}$ produces a characteristic wake pattern of waves first described by Lord Kelvin.

The two-dimensional wave equation

The wave equation is a second-order linear partial differential equation describing the behaviour of mechanical waves; its two (spatial) dimensional form can be used to describe waves on a surface of water:

Analysing flight punctuality data for UK airports: I. Basic statistics for 2022

The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) publishes regular statistics on the punctuality of flights arriving at and departing UK airports. These data can be retrieved with the script available on the GitHub repository accompanying this blog article: get_data.py.