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Finding Pi through colliding objects - inspired by 3Blue1Brown

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screenshot of the scene

Author: hiltropper

Group: Default

Filesize: 245.99 kB

Date added: 2020-07-28

Rating: 5.6

Downloads: 753

Views: 300

Comments: 2

Ratings: 2

Times favored: 0

Made with: Algodoo v2.1.0

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This scene allows you to find a limited number of decimal places of Pi - through collisions of physical objects. I optimized the scene in such a way that there is no hidden trick or script behind the phenomenon, that means no other trick than the trick itself, of course. The green ball weighs 1kg. There is no friction, no air resistance and every object that's relevant to the scene is 100% elastic. If you send the box on its way to collide with the ball, the ball will have collided X times in the end. X is a approximation of Pi, the precision is dependent on the weight of the box. It is scalable in magnitudes of 100 kg (1, 100, 10 000, 1 000 000...). So if you have a box that weighs 10 000kg, the collisions are expected to exceed 314, which is Pi with two decimal places.

Pi=3.1415926...

Further explanations of the scene are in the scene.

Inspired by 3Blue1Brown: "The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle"
To get behind the mechanism, i recommend you watch his video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfHFsfGXjs
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Responses to this scene:
Title Author Rating Downloads Comments Date added
Laser Ray Counter s_noonan 5 (1 vote) 672 0 2023/11/16 10:16:40
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Xray
2020/07/29 00:43:50
hiltropper -- Fascinating scene! :tup:

I first learned about colliding objects computing Pi a few years ago when I watched a YouTube video that explained the phenomenon with Billiard balls. There are other unbelievable ways to compute Pi, such as by dropping a needle from above parallel straight lines on paper (Search for "Buffon's Needle" on YT). The dropped needle will land crossing a line versus landing in between two lines Pi times as many! These are just a couple of samples of why I think math and physics are so interesting and amazing.

By the way, I see that it's been a few years since you have posted scenes here on Algobox before this current one. Welcome back! I hope that you will stick around and post more interesting scenes like this one, and like the others that you have posted many years ago. You are very talented and smart!
Last edited at 2020/07/29 00:47:22 by Xray
hiltropper
2020/07/29 13:23:37
Thank you!

"These are just a couple of samples of why I think math and physics are so interesting and amazing."

Yes, and i especially like it when you can recreate such experiments in some way and that's often the moment when Algodoo comes back into my mind.

"By the way, I see that it's been a few years since you have posted scenes here on Algobox before this current one. Welcome back! I hope that you will stick around and post more interesting scenes like this one, and like the others that you have posted many years ago. You are very talented and smart! "

I guess I will always come back to Algodoo from time to time, since i love its simplicity and capabilities. Of course life changes and you have less time or other things in mind, but eventually you get back to "hobbies" like this at some point. I also have some unfinished scenes laying around, for years in some cases. For example an Engine that is completely calculated (Seilinger cycle) and doesn't rely on algodoos engine so much (like spawn or spring engines), but rather on math. P-V-T equations of state and so on. So from time to time, you will see new scenes made by me ;)