Viewing posts by christian
Isolines on a nuclide chart
Posted by: christian on 26 Apr 2021
As a short addendum to this blog post, the code below plots a chart of the nuclides showing four types of isoline:
Nuclear fusion cross sections and reactivities
Posted by: christian on 30 Mar 2021
A quick update on this blog article with some extra cross sections and an additional plot of Maxwell-averaged reactivities. The processes covered are:
Measurements of the electron charge over time
Posted by: christian in Featured on frontpage on 29 Mar 2021
In his 1986 book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! physicist Richard Feynman writes:
Approximating images with overlapping straight lines
Posted by: christian on 4 Mar 2021
Just a quick script to approximate a given target image from a large number of overlapping straight lines. The algorithm is rather inefficient: each line is added to several copies of the the approximation so far, and the best one chosen (ie the one that differs least, in a root mean square sense, from the target image). The following animation is built up, using a target image adapted from target-kitten.png (credit: Kote Puerto).
Iceberg dynamics
Posted by: christian in Featured on frontpage on 22 Feb 2021
Prompted by this tweet and campaign for icebergs to be depicted in their most stable equilibrium orientation, here is a Python script modelling the dynamics of a two-dimensional iceberg which starts in an arbitrary orientation and position and relaxes under gravitational and buoyant forces to its most stable configuration. A cork floats "on its side": with its longest axis parallel to the water's surface (it doesn't bob around with its longest axis vertical), and an iceberg does the same.