Quantum, Relativity & Forces Explained | Pixelated Physics

8 articles

Pixel-art Lorenz attractor glowing like a butterfly in a stormy violet sky, with a small butterfly over the hills

Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect: Why Weat...

Edward Lorenz found that a tiny change in the starting numbers of a simple weather model led to a completely different forecast. That is the butterfly effect. Here are the...

Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect: Why Weat...

Edward Lorenz found that a tiny change in the starting numbers of a simple weather model led to a completely different forecast. That is the butterfly effect. Here are the...

Pixel-art golden symmetric wheel above an endless uniform tiled floor with a gliding puck, illustrating Noether’s theorem: symmetry gives conservation

Noether’s Theorem: Why Symmetry Means Conservation

Why is energy conserved? Why is momentum? In 1918 Emmy Noether gave a single answer: because the laws of physics have symmetries. Here is her theorem in plain language, a...

Noether’s Theorem: Why Symmetry Means Conservation

Why is energy conserved? Why is momentum? In 1918 Emmy Noether gave a single answer: because the laws of physics have symmetries. Here is her theorem in plain language, a...

Pixel-art Rössler attractor in cyan with its lifted fold in lime, captioned spiral, lift, fold, drop

The Rössler Attractor: One of the Simplest Chao...

Three short equations, only one nonlinear term, and the result is chaos: a band that spirals out, lifts, folds and falls back. Here is the Rössler attractor, how it stretches...

The Rössler Attractor: One of the Simplest Chao...

Three short equations, only one nonlinear term, and the result is chaos: a band that spirals out, lifts, folds and falls back. Here is the Rössler attractor, how it stretches...

Pixel-art Poincaré section of the chaotic Duffing oscillator, cyan and lime dots folded into a strange attractor, captioned strobed once per drive cycle

The Duffing Oscillator: Hardening Springs, Jump...

Make a spring stiffer the more you stretch it, push it back and forth, and its resonance bends, jumps and can turn chaotic. Here is the Duffing oscillator: hardening and...

The Duffing Oscillator: Hardening Springs, Jump...

Make a spring stiffer the more you stretch it, push it back and forth, and its resonance bends, jumps and can turn chaotic. Here is the Duffing oscillator: hardening and...

Pixel-art of a cyan cat face on navy at step 0, then sheared into stripes at steps 1 and 2 of Arnold's cat map, captioned shear, wrap, repeat

Arnold's Cat Map: How Chaos Scrambles a Picture...

Stretch a picture, cut it, stack it back into the square, and repeat. After a few steps the image is noise. Keep going and it comes back. Here is how...

Arnold's Cat Map: How Chaos Scrambles a Picture...

Stretch a picture, cut it, stack it back into the square, and repeat. After a few steps the image is noise. Keep going and it comes back. Here is how...

Pixel-art race between three ramps from A down to B: a straight violet line, a lime quarter circle and a cyan cycloid, with the cycloid bead ahead, titled The quickest way down

The Brachistochrone: Finding the Fastest Way Down

What shape of ramp gets a ball to the bottom fastest? Not a straight line, and not Galileo's circle. Here is the 1696 brachistochrone challenge, the cycloid that answers it,...

The Brachistochrone: Finding the Fastest Way Down

What shape of ramp gets a ball to the bottom fastest? Not a straight line, and not Galileo's circle. Here is the 1696 brachistochrone challenge, the cycloid that answers it,...