Hey, That's a Great Idea » mathematics

Golf Balls + Computational Fluid Dynamics

the idea collector — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:37:31 +0000

If I had 300 hours, 500 fast processors running in parallel, and a PhD in fluid dynamics I still probably wouldn’t analyze golf balls. But a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Maryland did.

Up to now, dimple design has been more of an art than a science. For many years, sporting goods companies would design their dimple patterns by simple trial and error, testing prototype after prototype against one another. The new study takes a different approach, asking how to design dimple size and pattern based on mathematical equations that model the physics of a golf ball in flight. Working out the solution to these equations — even on the fastest personal computers today — is not feasible since it would take more than 15 years of computing time just to get a glimpse of the flow around the golf ball for a fraction of a second.
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In the end, they produced a model that reveals the physics of a flying golf ball with the greatest level of detail ever seen — the first step in achieving the project’s long-term goal of optimizing dimple design to realize the lowest drag possible. The next step, says Smith, is to extend the work by comparing different dimple designs.

Check out the video on the Newswise article page. Pretty nice.

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Supercomputer Upgrades for Work on Climate Change and Renewable Energy

the idea collector — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:50:41 +0000

If I had a supercomputer with 1,645 teraflops of processing power and over 360 terabytes of memory, I'd make a few cycles available to scientists working on climate modeling and renewable energy.

"According to NCCS, key projects that will benefit from the Jaguar upgrade include, the Climate Change Initiative, which “aims to accelerate discoveries about Earth’s climate system through lab-wide engagement of scientists and engineers from diverse directorates encompassing energy, environment, computing, and national security” and ‘Tap it and Trap it,’ a project aimed at separating Carbon Dioxide from power plant emissions and pumping it deep underground."

{via CleanTechnica}

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Advanced Mathematics Applied to “A Hard Day’s Night”

the idea collector — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:47:12 +0000

Simplified Spectrum from Fourier Analysis

After years of trying to figure out the first chord of “A Hard Day’s Night,” Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics decided to throw a little math at the problem and ran a Fourier analysis. You remember from your mechanical vibrations, mechanical controls, and digital signal processing courses that a Fourier analysis can be used to translate a signal from the time domain to the frequency domain. It’s basically a really accurate EQ.

It worked, to a point: the frequencies he found didn’t match the known instrumentation on the song. “George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, Lennon had his six string, Paul had his bass…none of them quite fit what I found,” he explains. “Then the solution hit me: it wasn’t just those instruments. There was a piano in there as well, and that accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

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Dr. Brown deduces that another George—George Martin, the Beatles producer—also played on the chord, adding a piano chord that included an F note impossible to play with the other notes on the guitar. The resulting chord was completely different than anything found in the literature about the song to date, which is one reason why Dr. Brown’s findings garnered international attention. He laughs that he may be the only mathematician ever to be published in Guitar Player magazine.

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