WOLFRAM

Computation & Analysis

Wolfram Community Highlights: Animation, Chernoff Faces, Fingerprint ID, and More

Wolfram Community members continue to create amazing applications and visuals. Take a look at a few of our recent favorites. Wolfram Language animations make it easier to understand and investigate concepts and phenomena. They're also just plain fun. Among recent simple but stunning animations, you'll find "Deformations of the Cairo Tiling" and "Contours of a Singular Surface" by Clayton Shonkwiler, a mathematician and artist interested in geometric models of physical systems, and "Transit of Mercury 2016" by Sander Huisman, a postdoc in Lyon, France, researching Lagrangian turbulence.
Education & Academic

Special Event: Computational Thinking with Wolfram|Alpha

Last month marked the seventh anniversary of Wolfram|Alpha. Since its launch, Wolfram|Alpha has earned a reputation as an indispensable tool for learning math and many other topics. We have been continually adding new content and capabilities to Wolfram|Alpha, and now we want to show you how it can be used to support computational thinking in any classroom. We invite you to join us at a special virtual event, Wolfram|Alpha in Your Classroom: Virtual Workshop for Educators, on June 15, 2016, 2--3pm US EDT (6--7pm GMT). Come see examples of how Wolfram|Alpha's built-in data and analysis capabilities can be used to enrich many types of classes, and take the opportunity to preview upcoming tools from Wolfram that will make teaching and learning easier.
Products

What Do Gravitational Crystals Really Look (i.e. Move) Like?

In a recent blog, Stephen Wolfram discusses the idea of what he calls "gravitational crystals." These are infinite arrays of gravitational bodies in periodic motion. Two animations of mesmerizing movements of points were given as examples of what gravitational crystals could look like, but no explicit orbit calculations were given. In this blog, I will carefully calculate explicit numerical examples of gravitational crystal movements. The "really" in the title should be interpreted as a high-precision, numerical solution to an idealized model problem. It should not be interpreted as "real world." No retardation, special or general relativistic effects, stability against perturbation, tidal effects, or so on are taken into account in the following calculations. More precisely, we will consider the simplest case of a gravitational crystal: two gravitationally interacting, rigid, periodic 2D planar arrays embedded in 3D (meaning a 1/distance2 force law) of masses that can move translationally with respect to each other (no rotations between the two lattices). Each infinite array can be considered a crystal, so we are looking at what could be called the two-crystal problem (parallel to, and at the same time in distinction to, the classical gravitational two-body problem).
Education & Academic

An Exact Value for the Planck Constant: Why Reaching It Took 100 Years

Blog communicated on behalf of Jean-Charles de Borda.

Some thoughts for World Metrology Day 2016

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of precision and science I've been around for a long, long time Stole many a man's pound and toise And I was around when Louis XVI Had his moment of doubt and pain Made damn sure that metric rules Through platinum standards made forever Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name

Introduction and about me

In case you can't guess: I am Jean-Charles de Borda, sailor, mathematician, scientist, and member of the Académie des Sciences, born on May 4, 1733, in Dax, France. Two weeks ago would have been my 283rd birthday. This is me:
Education & Academic

New Derivatives of the Bessel Functions Have Been Discovered with the Help of the Wolfram Language!

Nearly two hundred years after Friedrich Bessel introduced his eponymous functions, expressions for their derivatives with respect to parameters, valid over the double complex plane, have been found.
In this blog we will show and briefly discuss some formerly unknown derivatives of special functions (primarily Bessel and related functions), and explore the history and current status of differentiation by parameters of hypergeometric and other functions. One of the main formulas found (more details below) is a closed form for the first derivative of one of the most popular special functions, the Bessel function J:
Education & Academic

Special Event: New Wolfram Language Resources for the Classroom

Earlier this year we launched Wolfram Programming Lab as the place to start learning the Wolfram Language. And since launch, we've received a lot of feedback and support from educators and students interested in using Programming Lab in their classrooms. Programming Lab was conceived and designed with teaching in mind, and to help make Programming Lab the best possible learning environment, we've developed some new tools for both students and teachers. We invite you to preview these new materials at a special virtual event, New Resources for the Classroom: Virtual Workshop for Educators.
Computation & Analysis

Computational Stippling: Can Machines Do as Well as Humans?

Stippling is a kind of drawing style using only points to mimic lines, edges, and grayscale. The entire drawing consists only of dots on a white background. The density of the points gives the impression of grayscale shading. Back in 1510, stippling was first invented as an engraving technique, and then became popular in many fields because it requires just one color of ink. Here is a photo of a fine example taken from an exhibition of lithography and copperplate art (the Centenary of European Engraving Exhibition held at the Hubei Museum of Art in March 2015; in case you're curious, here is the museum's official page in English).
Education & Academic

Celebrate Math Awareness with This Wolfram|Alpha Promo

April and Mathematics Awareness Month will soon be coming to an end, and so will these special offers on Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha. As I mentioned in my last post, this year's Mathematics Awareness Month explores "the Future of Prediction" via mathematics and statistics. Ever since the earliest recognition of mathematics, people have used it to make accurate predictions not only in math but also in related fields.