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Education & Academic

Martin Gardner’s 100th Birthday

For today's magic show: A century ago, Martin Gardner was born in Oklahoma. He philosophized for his diploma. He wrote on Hex and Tic-Tac-Toe. The Icosian game and polyomino. Flexagons from paper trim, Samuel Loyd, the game of Nim. Digital roots and Soma stairs, mazes, logic, magic squares. Squaring squares, the golden Phi. Solved the spider and the fly.
Ed Pegg Jr, Scientific Information Editor, Scientific Information Group
Education & Academic

Summer Internships

Summer has drawn to a close, and so too have our annual internships. Each year Wolfram welcomes a new group of interns to work on an exciting array of projects ranging all the way from Bell polynomials to food science. It was a season for learning, growth, and making strides across disciplinary and academic divides. The Wolfram interns are an invaluable part of our team, and they couldn't wait to tell us all about their time here. Here are just a few examples of the work that was done.
Jenna Giuffrida, Content Administrator, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Education & Academic

First Tweet-a-Program Code Challenge: Space Week

In honor of World Space Week and this year’s theme of satellite navigation, “Space: Guiding Your Way,” we’re issuing a Tweet-a-Program Code Challenge focused on anything to do with space and getting there. You tweet us your "space-iest" line(s) of Wolfram Language code, and then we’ll use the Wolfram Language to randomly select three winning tweets (plus a few favorites) to shower with retweets, pin or post to our wall, and receive a free Wolfram T-shirt! Any space-themed submissions tweeted to us @wolframtap all day Thursday and Friday (12am PDT Thursday, October 9 through 11:59pm PDT Friday, October 10) will be eligible to win. To not waste needed code space, no hashtag is required with your original submission, but we encourage you to share your results by retweeting them with hashtag #wsw2014 and #tapspaceweek. In addition to satellite path tracking and real-time analysis, the Wolfram Language gives you access to all sorts of entities, formulas, and other functionality for astronomical computation and coding---from supernovas, comets, and constellations to the Sun, deep space, and other galaxies. Maybe you want to remix the planets and their colors, as Stephen Wolfram did in one of his first Tweet-a-Program tweets:
Wolfram Blog Team
Education & Academic

The Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics ceremony is upon us once again! With the 2014 winner set to be revealed in Stockholm next week, we at Wolfram got to wondering how many of the past recipients have been Mathematica users. We found no less than 10 Nobel Prize–winning physicists who personally registered copies of Mathematica. That’s at least one in every eight Physics laureates since 1980! And anecdotal evidence suggests that nearly every Nobel laureate uses Mathematica through their institution’s site license.
Richard Asher, Public Relations
Products

Modeling Aircraft Flap System Failure Scenarios with SystemModeler

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram SystemModeler trial. Have you heard about the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter that flew to the wrong airport and was forced to land on too short of a runway? Luckily, that story had a happy ending, and no passengers were hurt. Still, it is a potentially dangerous scenario when the landing distance required (LDR) is longer than the runway, and there are other possible reasons for such a situation besides a pilot gone astray. One potential cause of such a scenario is a flap system failure. Flaps are hinged devices located on the trailing edges of the wings, where their angular position can be adjusted to change the lift properties of the plane. For example, suitably adjusting the flap position can enable the plane to be flown at a lower speed while maintaining its lift, or allow it to be landed with a steeper angle of descent without any increase in speed. One of several resulting advantages is that the LDR becomes shorter. This makes me wonder: Could a small flap failure increase the LDR so much that the assigned runway is suddenly too short? To answer such a question, you have to understand the effects that a failure on a component level have at a system level. How will the control system react to it? Can we somehow figure out how to detect it during a test procedure? Can we come up with a safety procedure to compensate for it, and what happens if the pilot or maintenance personnel for some reason fail to follow that procedure?
Anneli Mossberg Olle Isaksson
Announcements & Events

Presentations Available from Wolfram Experts Live: New in Mathematica 10

Following one of our most anticipated releases to date, we hosted the virtual workshop Wolfram Experts Live: New in Mathematica 10 to give the Wolfram community the details on this latest version of our flagship product Mathematica. A dozen Wolfram experts and Mathematica developers came together at our headquarters—both in person and remotely via online connections---to take turns showing off new advances in usability, algorithmic functionality, and integration with the Wolfram Cloud. Presenters participated in a live Q&A with the online audience, and in turn were able to hear from Mathematica users and enthusiasts.
Jamie Peterson, Director, Wolfram U
Products

Introducing Tweet-a-Program

In the Wolfram Language a little code can go a long way. And to use that fact to let everyone have some fun, today we’re introducing Tweet-a-Program. Compose a tweet-length Wolfram Language program, and tweet it to @WolframTaP. Our Twitter bot will run your program in the Wolfram Cloud and tweet back the result.

Stephen Wolfram
Announcements & Events

Launching Today: Mathematica Online!

It’s been many years in the making, and today I’m excited to announce the launch of Mathematica Online: a version of Mathematica that operates completely in the cloud—and is accessible just through any modern web browser. In the past, using Mathematica has always involved first installing software on your computer. But as of today that’s […]

Stephen Wolfram
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