Posted in optics, physics, tagged fractal, fimo, fiber, photonic, crystal on December 9, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Evilmadscientist has a well-documented project on drawing (stretching, not sketching) fimo into fractal patterns. You can start with a set of four triangular rods, stacked together into one larger triangle, strech them out to make them skinny, stack them in with four other similar assemblies, and iterate to make fractals. Aside from the fractal part, [...]
Posted in computing, latex, mac tips & tricks, tagged datagraph, latex, mac, plotting on December 5, 2007 | No Comments »
In a previous post, I listed DataGraph as one of my most-used mac apps. Its status as most-used just got a major boost with the addition of LaTeX functionality in the text label fields. To see this feature it action, you’ll have to download the latest beta from the DataGraph website. I’ve posted some screenshots [...]
Posted in computing, mac tips & tricks, open source software, tagged animate, c++, codec, divx, mac, perian, png on December 4, 2007 | 3 Comments »
I have struggled with optimizing the process of animating PNG files. I have code that generates a PNG image based on an array of data, which, in my case is the intensity of an optical beam, but it can be anything. I have found various options ranging from quick-and-dirty to fairly robust. MEncoder plays a [...]
Posted in experiments, physics, tagged history, optics, photoelectric on December 3, 2007 | 1 Comment »
A discussion at one of our recent group meetings, reminded me of the interesting history behind the observation of the Photoelectric Effect. Some of these classic papers are quite impressive, especially as experimental feats. While the photoelectric effect was first observed by Heinrich Hertz, Phillip von Lenard, and others, it was the experiment of Robert [...]
Posted in computing, open source software, tagged array, c++, matlab, png on December 3, 2007 | 1 Comment »
To continue the series on using C++ to replace MATLAB, here are some details about using the pngwriter library. Included below is a function that I use in various places to write a 2D array to a png file. This can be left in a header somewhere and used in a similar way to MATLAB’s [...]
Posted in mac tips & tricks, open source software, physics, tagged bibdesk, mac, textmate, datagraph, quicksilver on December 1, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Inspired by a recent post by Sujit Datta, I decided to start a series covering my favorite Mac applications. These are generally physics-type applications but should be useful to a wide range of people in any field of science.
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