Iron Butterfly and the Lorentz Attractor

[DeeJayEss]

I've just posted a clip on YouTube, I've already thought of a few improvements but would be grateful for

any comments or suggestions.

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

[jpappas]

DeeJayEss,

 

I really like this, nice job! I loved that dynamic camera view when it tracks behind the butterfly, and also the way you've built banking into the turns (by the way, did you use an expression for that too?) The change in smoke color and showing the x/y/z grid - very cool! I'm curious to see what additions you'll make in the next version.

 

-Jim

[Paul Forwood]

Ooooh! Very nice!

It would be even better with some music and maybe a soft voice introduction to what the Lorentz Attractor is.

[phatso]

Ah, the educational possibilities. Instead of having a gazillion teachers in a gazillion classrooms doing duplicate lectures, we ought to have a gazillion people working on one creatively written lecture produced for DVD with a Hollywood budget. Think of what would happen if people with DJ's creativity were able to apply their talent to the business of instruction.

 

You may remember the movie Amadeus. What started out as a (highly fictionalized) whodunnit involving Mozart and Salieri essentially morphed into a 2-hour music appreciation lecture that people with little previous appreciation of Mozart stood in line and paid to see. Such is the power of the big-budget approach.

 

Two-bit prediction: in ten years, video teaching will completely replace the traditional classroom lecture. And A:Mers will be in the thick of it.

[robcat2075]

that looks wonderful. Were you doing these Lorentz things before or was that another forum member?

 

Is the color driven by the equation or is that manually decided?

 

 

Ah, the educational possibilities. Instead of having a gazillion teachers in a gazillion classrooms doing duplicate lectures, we ought to have a gazillion people working on one creatively written lecture produced for DVD with a Hollywood budget...

 

if you can figure out how to recover the Hollywood budget, in a time when everyone thinks it's fair use to copy anything for "educational purposes", that might work.

 

But I'll admit I learned a lot more about jazz history from the Ken Burns PBS series than I did from the lame class I took in college. And I guess PBS has found a way to pay for it somehow. On the other hand I doubt many students today will sit still for a program that consists almost entirely of pans across still photos.

[phatso]

They won't. That's where ANIMATION comes in!

 

The Ken Burns thing could be considered a halfway point between the lame class you took in college (snore) and a full-blown Hollywood production. KB is light-years ahead of a lecture. A $50mil Hollywood film would be light years ahead of Ken Burns.

 

And still, at that, dirt cheap - think how much it costs the taxpayers to have a couple of million teachers in a couple of million classrooms blathering away. And next year the same expense all over again. While the Hollywood film would last for years or, depending on the subject, decades. Think "Dick, Jane and Sally" for the 21st century.

 

The sheer economic pressure that is building is why I think that, despite inertia, despite the teachers' union, despite everything, stuff like DJ's Lorenz attractor video represents the future - and teachers scratching away at blackboards do not.

 

Speaking of Dick, Jane and Sally - when I was six years old, I thought they were lame. (Look! Look! Look! Oh! Oh!) Did you?

 

Hmm. I seem to have hijacked this thread. Oh well... DJ, any way of making the butterfly flap its wings? Best if it would flap faster when it's climbing than when it's coasting; you could prolly write an expression for that. And for music, something dynamic -John Adams' "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" maybe.

 

 

Edit: just took my own advice and watched it while listening to Short Ride. Doesn't match up, the music is twice as long as the video, but the dramatic impact is impressive. With better-matched music, what a great segment of a complete video math course this would make! Especially in a stereo view.

[Rodney]

Dave,

That still image DOES NOT do justice to your animation.

I could almost feel the G force for a little while while watching. Nice!