Wolfram Community continues to grow with innovative projects from Wolfram technology aficionados—our total number of members having recently passed 20,000! Deck the halls with these shiny new examples of the content making our tech-oriented social network thrive, and be sure to post your own Wolfram technology–based projects as well.

Anamorphic Reflections in a Christmas Ball

Erik Mahieu

Inspired by a sculpture featuring anamorphic deformation by reflection in a spherical mirror, Erik Mahieu finds the math behind the project and builds his own reflective sphere out of a Christmas ball ornament. This is an excellent project for the artistically inclined mathematician.

Visualizing the InSight Landing Site on Mars

Jeff Bryant

The November 26 NASA landing of the InSight lander was described as “seven minutes of terror.” Jeff Bryant uses GeoGraphics to visualize the landing, offering a computational viewpoint of the details of what it takes to successfully land a robotic lander on Mars.

O Tannenbaum: Making a Christmas Animation with the Wolfram Language

Michael Trott

The Wolfram Language is all you need to create a Christmas tree with a conducting branch that holds a candle as a baton, performing any of your favorite Christmas songs! In this version, the trees’ branches move in synchrony to the different instruments playing O Tannenbaum. Add ornaments and a light snowfall to complete a computational white Christmas.

Where Is the Oldest Known (2,400 Years) Intact Shipwreck?

Vitaliy Kaurov

Where is the oldest known intact shipwreck located? This 2,400-year-old archeological gem was recently discovered two kilometers deep at the bottom of the Black Sea, with the exact location undisclosed. Embark on some computational detective work with Vitaliy Kaurov using a wide scope of Wolfram Language tools, from curated data to geography, geometry and more.

The Continued Logarithm of π

Bill Gosper

Bill Gosper, renowned mathematician and programmer, writes a computational essay on the continued logarithm of π. A continued logarithm is an arbitrarily long bit string, approximating a real number arbitrarily well. Bill does an excellent job making math interesting and accessible, so share this with your math-curious friends!

The “Mathy” Arts of Coding Postcards

Vitaliy Kaurov

Using several past Christmas-related posts on Wolfram Community together makes for a charming final product, as Vitaliy demonstrates in this post. The code used for this animation was taken from postcards and other projects created as far back as six years ago. Enjoy the combined talents of users of the Wolfram Language who may have never heard of each other—a true Christmas miracle.
If you haven’t joined Wolfram Community yet, please do so! You can chime in on discussions like the ones featured in this post, show off your own work in groups of your interest and browse the complete list of Staff Picks.