Cats and dogs
Aug 24th 2006Wallabynerd alert
Found this interesting comparison of people to cats and dogs this afternoon. If you can’t guess or don’t know me, I think I tend toward dog-ness.
I was looking more for software to predict the patterns formed by tiling circles (spherical particles) of several different sizes, which led me to ‘ghost diagrams’ on the same site… not quite what I need though, and rather confusing even to play with.
Then there’s “Tess”, which is much more fun to play with. But still not at all what I need. Any suggestions?
2 Responses to “Cats and dogs”
I recall that one xscreensaver draws plane-filling circles within a large circle with varying sizes of circles. Perhaps that might be of use. The way solid state people would do it is construct a unit cell of different size circles in a rigid structural arrangement, then tile the space with it… But it doesn’t sound like that is what you are doing, either. The next best bet is in rheology or a journal of concrete or cement (aggregate mixing), as their properties are closely tied to the particle size distribution and what sort of pattern they might form. Possibly also people who put microspheres into solids to lighten them as composites have gone here before, too. Of these, I like the construction of a unit cell best, as you can see by the symmetries what patterns can result by tiling.
*blinks* That does not sound at all like “jaegermom”… apparently my parents have traded brains.
Yeah, it’d be quite easy if I knew in advance what the unit cell should look like. Rheology/aggregates are a good lead. This search was motivated in part by reports of a very broad array of nanoparticle arrangements as a function of relative size (earlier this year, but I just found about it through an article in C&E News). So perhaps I should just hunt through that work to see how they did it — if they even have; a quick read through didn’t turn anything up.