Tag
4 articles on this topic.
Blog
It started with two rules: bonds have a length, and things attached to the same atom push each other away. That got methane its tetrahedron and benzene its hexagon. Then water needed lone pairs, ethene needed a reason not to fold in half, ethane needed a reason to stagger, and copper needed to be told. Here is what each rule bought, and what the ones I tried and threw away did not.
Blog
Drop charged vertices into a 3D workspace, join them, and let them settle. Every Platonic solid comes out with its edges equal to within a thousandth, from an energy that has no notion of an angle and no rest length. The Archimedean solids come out wrong, and the reason why turns out to be the interesting part.
Blog
The seconds hand moves because a balance wheel is vibrating, and for no other reason. Wind the crown, pull it out to set the time, put it on a wrist and let the rotor wind it for you, and fade the bridges away to watch the escapement lock, unlock and impulse five times a second.
Blog
Most orbit controls rotate around a fixed origin, which starts to feel wrong the moment you zoom in on something off-centre. These controls pick whatever sits under your cursor as the object of interest and orbit around that instead.