A blog of Python-related topics and code.
Uranium enrichment and the separative work unit (SWU)
Posted by: christian in Featured on frontpage on 30 Nov 2020
Natural uranium consists largely of two isotopes, $\mathrm{^{235}U}$ and $\mathrm{^{238}U}$. The less-abundant (0.72%) isotope, $\mathrm{^{235}U}$ , is important for nuclear reactors and weapons because it is the only isotope existing in nature to any appreciable extent that can sustain a fission chain reaction (that is, it is fissile).
Surface-to-volume ratios of some solid shapes
Posted by: christian on 27 Nov 2020
The shape with the minimum surface-to-volume ratio is the sphere. The code below plots this ratio for a variety of shapes as a function of a characteristic length:
Langton's ant on a hexagonal plane
Posted by: christian on 22 Nov 2020
Langton's ant is a two-dimensional cellular automaton usually implemented on a square grid in which each cell has one of two states (white or black). The ant moves according to the simple rules:
Visualizing vibronic transitions in a diatomic molecule
Posted by: christian in Featured on frontpage on 7 Oct 2020
The Morse oscillator code introduced in a previous blog post can be used to visualize the vibronic transitions in a diatomic molecule by creating two Morse objects (one for each electronic state) and plotting their potential energy curves and energy levels on the same Matplotlib Axes object.
Plotting nuclide halflives
Posted by: christian in Featured on frontpage on 29 Sep 2020
More than 3000 nuclides (atomic species characterised by the number of neutrons and protons in their nuclei) are known, most of them radioactive with a half-life of less than an hour. About 250 or so of them are stable (not observed to decay using presently-available instruments). The IAEA has an interactive online browser of the nuclides.