Monthly Archives: November 2018

Huygens’ Ruler – Drawing Interference Patterns

Here’s a quick project to make it easier to draw examples of interference patterns and wave behaviour. I call it Huygens’ Ruler: It’s based on the idea of Huygens’ principle, the idea that every point on a wavefront becomes the source … Continue reading

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‘Born Ruler’ addon for Qubit/Bloch Sphere

Here’s something I was planning to make ages ago, as part of the Bloch Sphere project, but it slipped my mind. It’s a visual demonstration of how the Born Rule, which describes how complex ‘probability amplitudes’ are related to probability. … Continue reading

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Lasercut bobbin rack for sewing thread

Here’s something I came up with today to make it easier to organise sewing thread. The problem is how to organise about four or five tubs worth of these: As an experiment, here’s what the exact same collection would look … Continue reading

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Why the Bragg Condition Sucks

(With sincere apologies to both Sir William Bragg, and also Sir William Bragg. I’d have loved to meet you both, and also see your famous bubble raft demo in person!) At a late stage in the spiral double slit project, … Continue reading

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Feynman Spirals Part 3 – FAQ

Here’s a brief F.A.Q. for things I’ve been asked about the spiral & the double slit experiment. Q: First off, what the actual directions of the plot correspond to? Good question.  In the original 2D graph, one axis was distance … Continue reading

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Feynman Spirals Part 2 – Making Models

So after playing around with the Feynman Amplitude Spiral and plotting the shape on the computer, I realised I really, really, really wanted my own tangible version of it. Here’s a few of my attempts. I’ll also include links for … Continue reading

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Plotting Feynman’s Amplitude Spiral after 50 years

I’m tickled pink to have the honor to be (so far as I know) the first person to publish a 3D rendering of one of Feynman’s favourite experiments, and hopefully make a key concept in quantum physics much more tangible … Continue reading

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Making the Braided Galton Board

Here’s the process for making the wire & bead Galton boards. First up, cutting the wire to length. I screwed two wood screws right into the bench, then wrapped the wire back and forth till I had a bundle of … Continue reading

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Improved Braided Galton Board

I’ve played with the Galton Board before a couple of times. It’s a lovely demonstration of the ‘Central Limit Theorem’ in statistics. That is, it shows in a really intuitive way how repeated binomial events (like coin flips) average out … Continue reading

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