Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Read more… »

So, if you can see the equations below, WAAWAAWEEWAH!

Unfortunately, the ones below were messed up by Wordpress, so I had to render them directly using the CGI.

(Yes, all that was a test to see if everything actually worked.)

« Hide

Read more… »

For the most part, I have been rather confused about the area that I would specialize in — I used to work on Quantum Computing under Professor Jean Bellissard at Georgia Tech, however I am not certain if that is a good area to work on, unless you are doing experimental work or are collaborating with one as a theoretician.

The two other areas that interest me are High-Energy Physics (HEP) and Astrophysics. While HEP tends to be a lot more experimental, it also tends to be quite rewarding. However, astrophysics would give me the perfect balance between experimental and theoretical work. So, at the moment, I have been quite strongly leaning towards the latter.

To this end, I met up with Professor Margaret Hanson and Professor Michael Sitko from the University of Cincinnati. Professor Hanson is also the associate editor of the prestigious Astronomical Journal and Professor Sitko is a research scientist at the Space Science Institute.

To a great extent, the discussion mostly centered around me doing my Ph.D. in Astrophysics (well, it would be a Ph.D. in Physics with a focus on Astronomy & Astrophysics) and understanding the work that is being done in UC in this area. It was certainly interesting, and there are some interesting research opportunities.

Now, I will have to weigh my options and see what I really want to do. Questions, questions! Drop me a bone, someone?

« Hide

Read more… »

Earlier, I had clubbed anything related to science and technology (amongst other things) under the broad category of technology. The reason for this, of course, was the ongoing confusion about such things as whether strange attractors would fall under the category of mathematics or whether they would fall under the category of computer graphics. Or where would quantum computing fall under.

Now, I have created three separate categories: computing, physics and mathematics for the pages. While there are some pages (such as industrial design and puzzles) that do not fit into any of these categories, most others do. And yes, these categories are extremely subjective.

This post is mostly to let you fine readers know of the changes, and of course to appease the search engine gods.

« Hide

Read more… »

The homotopy between a Roman surface and a Boy surface can be given by the following equations [1]:

for u [-PI/2, PI/2] and v [0, PI] and alpha varies from 0 (Roman surface) through 1 (Boy surface).

The following figures show the transformation between the two:

And here is the code for generating this (you can also use this to render an animation).

clear;
stacksize (10000000);
num_points = 50;
u = linspace (-%pi/2, %pi/2, num_points);
v= linspace (0, %pi, num_points);
[U, V] = meshgrid (u, v);
//alpha = 0: Roman surface; alpha = 1: Boy surface;
alpha = linspace(0, 1, 25);
for i = 1:length(alpha)
x = ((sqrt(2).*cos(2*U).*cos(V).*cos(V))+cos(U).*sin(2*V))./(2-alpha(i).*sqrt(2).*sin(3*U).*sin(2*V));
y = ((sqrt(2).*sin(2*U).*cos(V).*cos(V))-sin(U).*sin(2*V))./(2-alpha(i).*sqrt(2).*sin(3*U).*sin(2*V));
z = (3*cos(V).*cos(V))./(2-alpha(i)*sqrt(2).*sin(3*U)*sin(2*V));
surf(x, y, z,’edgecol’,'gre’);
end

[1] Courtesy: Roman surface (Mathworld)

« Hide

Read more… »

//Riemann sphere

clear;
stacksize (10000000);
num_points = 50;

u = linspace (-1, 1, num_points);
v = linspace (0, %pi, num_points);
[U, V] = meshgrid (u, v);

a = 1;
b = sqrt(1 + (a.*U).^2);

x = sin(U + V)./b;
y = cos(U + V)./b;
z = -a.*U./b;

surf(x, y, z,’edgecol’,'gre’);

« Hide