{"id":1078,"date":"2007-04-08T12:20:37","date_gmt":"2007-04-08T10:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2007-04-08T12:20:37","modified_gmt":"2007-04-08T10:20:37","slug":"round-billardtables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=1078","title":{"rendered":"round billardtables"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"UeEi.JPG\"
\nRest of an \u00dcberraschungsei<\/a> used for a pendulum<\/p>\n

It is an interesting question how to approach big challenges. There exists the socalled Top-down and bottom-up design paradigma<\/a> which is prevalent in computer programming but not only there. It appears also in math, where for example people study special examples (bottom-up)(like e.g. certain differential equations) as well as conceptional questions (top-down)(like e.g. construction of the number system via set theory). It is not only in programming useful to use both approaches. The top-down approach has often the advantage to detect conceptional connections, whereas the bottom-up approach has usually a better connection to applied problems. However sometimes also within the bottom-up approach unexpected connections may appear.<\/p>\n

A funny connection between two more-or-less special applications is for example the fact that a discrete pendulum (a mathematical pendulum seen with a strobe light<\/a> (and the classical counterpart of the quantum pendulum<\/a>) can be identified with the movement of a ball in a billard with an elliptic shape<\/a> (via certain coordinates, proof in my Ph.D. thesis). An ellipse is a generalized circle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another funny artistic mixture of these two concepts is the Oval with pendulum<\/a> by Gabriel Orozco<\/a>. (see also interview on pbs<\/a>). I think I saw his elliptic billard table at the MAC<\/a> in 2001, but I don’t remember wether it was part of a temporal exhibition or not and I couldn’t find too much information on the MAC online.<\/p>\n

Currently Gabriel Orozco is busy with an equally interesting project. He and photographers Adam Broomberg + Oliver Chanarin and film maker Dustin Lynn are working on the first of several \u2018mini missions\u2019 to \u2018ARTiculate\u2122 some of the world’s most environmentally trashed regions with the end goal of then presenting work in response to their findings. (article on treehugger<\/a>, the adventureecology website<\/a> is a flash site so I cant link the information directly)<\/p>\n

Last not least there exist of course the well-known connection between an ellipsoid or egg (3 dim analog of an ellipse) and a pendulum (see above image or e.g. this application for dowsing<\/a>), but funnily a similar mixture of elliptic shapes and pendulum seems also to appear in astronomy. (?)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rest of an \u00dcberraschungsei used for a pendulum It is an interesting question how to approach big challenges. There exists the socalled Top-down and bottom-up design paradigma which is prevalent in computer programming but not only there. It appears also in math, where for example people study special examples (bottom-up)(like e.g. certain differential equations) as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,2,7,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}