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Recreational Computation

Education & Academic

Getting Hot and Spicy on the Scoville Scale with Wolfram Language

National Chili Day is February 23 and we’re celebrating the spicy heat that peppers bring to a great bowl of chili by exploring the "ScovilleRating" property in Wolfram Language. The Scoville scale ranks the spiciness (or pungency) of peppers by measuring the amount of the molecule capsaicin in a pepper and assigning it a number rating in Scoville heat units (SHUs). Pharmacist and chemist Wilbur Scoville introduced the “Scoville organoleptic test,” which eventually became the Scoville scale, in 1912. At the time, Mr. Scoville relied on human taste testers willing to do this challenging job. Today, scientists use high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to determine the precise amount of capsaicin in a pepper.
Isabel Skidmore, Food Data Consultant
Current Events & History

Should I Eat That? Food Safety with Wolfram Language

Foodborne illness, or food poisoning, is something many of us have experienced. According to the World Health Organization, almost 1 in 10 people in the world fall ill each year after eating contaminated food. Luckily, by following recommended food safety practices, we can do our best to avoid getting sick.

September is Food Safety Education Month. To highlight the importance of food safety, we have introduced two new properties in Wolfram Language that can help users make smart choices about food storage:

Isabel Skidmore, Food Data Consultant
Current Events & History

Cheers! A Computational Exploration of Alcoholic Beverages with the Wolfram Language

For 10 thousand years, humans have been using fermentation to produce beverages for pleasure, rituals and healing. In ancient Greece, honey was fermented to produce mead. Today, popular sources of beverage fermentation are grains, grapes, berries and rice. The science of fermentation—known as zymology (or zymurgy)—is a fascinating blend of chemistry, biology, history and geography. The Wolfram Language now brings a new dimension to the study of alcoholic beverages through an extensive dataset ready to be explored and analyzed.
Isabel Skidmore, Food Data Consultant
Computation & Analysis

Animating Surfaces in the Wolfram Language Bringing Geometric Design to Life

Around the beginning of the first COVID-19-related lockdown in Austria, I was confronted with the problem of keeping my motivation up. From 2012–2016, my main tool for creating several Wolfram Demonstrations in 3D was Mathematica. Now, in addition to the Wolfram Language, Blender offered the possibility for physically based rendering (PBR) and high dynamic range (HDR) lighting and rendering. So I decided to go forward with 4K videos from animations done in Blender.
Guenther Gsaller, Guest Author
Computation & Analysis

Computational Art: 2022 Wolfram Language Winners

The Wolfram Language is incredibly versatile, and while it is most closely associated with mathematics, it has powerful features in a range of areas. As a challenge to our users on Wolfram Community, the 2022 Wolfram Computational Art Contest prompted participants to use Wolfram technology to flex their creativity to generate art.
Eryn Gillam, Precollege Educational Programs Coordinator, Outreach & Communications
Education & Academic

Liberal Arts, Meet Computation A Wolfram Community Introduction

We can guess if you’re reading the Wolfram Blog that you’re probably a Wolfram Language user, whether as a recreational programmer, a physics professor or a high-powered data scientist. And let’s be honest about another thing: if you’re using it to solve algebraic integrals or analyze SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences or some other complex subject, you’re likely a big-brained person. I mean, you’re investigating the very nature of the universe in all its facets, right?
Mark Long, Senior Technical Communications Manager, Outreach & Communications
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