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News, Views & Insights

Education & Academic

Exploring Maxwell’s Equations with Mathematica 9

I love Maxwell's equations. As a freshman in college, while pondering whether to major in physics, computer science, or music, it was the beauty of these equations and the physical predictions that can be elegantly extracted from them that made me decide in favor of physics. On a more universal level, the hints in Maxwell's equations led Einstein to write Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"), more commonly known as Einstein's first paper on the theory of relativity. The quantum version of the equations, quantum electrodynamics (QED), remains our most successful physical theory, with predictions verified to 12 decimal places. There are many reasons to love Maxwell's equations. And with Mathematica 9's new vector analysis functionality, exploring them has never been easier.
Itai Seggev, Senior Kernel Developer, Algorithms R&D
Education & Academic

Good Times, Great Computations: Wolfram Summer Internship Projects

Each summer a group of interns arrives at Wolfram Research to work on a host of exciting projects that not only prepare them for their future careers, but also give them the opportunity to make some great contributions to Wolfram technologies. One such contribution this year was the “Fun Curves” project for Wolfram|Alpha that took drawings of famous cartoon characters and turned them into mathematical equations.
The Summer 2013 Wolfram Interns
Education & Academic

Musing about Rectangular Bar Magnets

(This is the third post in a three-part series about electrostatic and magnetostatic problems involving sharp edges.) In the first blog post of this series, we looked at magnetic field configurations of piecewise straight wires. In the second post, we discussed charged cubes and orbits of test particles in their electric field. Today we will look at magnetic systems, concretely, mainly at a rectangular bar magnet with uniform magnetization.
Michael Trott, Chief Scientist, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Education & Academic

Visualizing Our Place in the Milky Way Galaxy with Mathematica

In today's world, people often forget about the wonders of the night sky. Modern conveniences provided by civilization such as electricity and lighting result in light pollution that obscures our views. Pictures like the one below that I took near Champaign, Illinois show the yellow glow of city lights that reduces the contrast with the night sky and makes it difficult to see some of the more visually stunning, but lower contrast sights like the Milky Way. But you can still make out the Milky Way in my photo as a cloudy stripe that runs up from the southern horizon during summer in the Northern hemisphere, or winter if you are in the Southern hemisphere.
Jeff Bryant, Research Programmer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Computation & Analysis

Even More Formulas… for Everything—From Filled Algebraic Curves to the Twitter Bird, the American Flag, Chocolate Easter Bunnies, and the Superman Solid

This blog post is the continuation of my last two posts (1, 2) about formulas for curves. So far, we have discussed how to make plane curves that are sketches of animals, faces, fictional characters, and more. In this post, we will discuss the constructions of some filled curves (laminae).
Michael Trott, Chief Scientist, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Announcements & Events

A Visit to Disney’s Magic Kingdom

I just finished giving a short presentation to several thousand screaming fans at the D23 Disney fan convention in Anaheim, California. When I say “screaming fans,” what I mean is Disney fans who were literally screaming at what I had to say. This already somewhat improbable situation was made all the more surprising by the fact that they were screaming about FindClusters. Well, technically, most of them may not have actually realized that’s what they were screaming about, because they were seeing only the output of the command, not the actual Mathematica code. But the thing they were so excited about was direct output from Mathematica, and the key differentiating factor that made it so interesting to them was the ability of FindClusters to discern, differentiate, and illuminate the shifting moods and emotions of animated feature films.
Theodore Gray, Cofounder, Wolfram Research, Inc.; Founder, Touch Press
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