Circle Packings – Week 7

At the end of last week, I finished creating the Python script that generates 180 different 1D grayscale banded images, simulating the scan of a soap bubble cluster at every angle from 0 to 180 degrees. As a memory-refresher: Fig. 1: 1D Image representing a scan from a given angle This week, I worked on …

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Circle Packings – Week 6

Last week, I worked on integrating code from the circle packing software, CirclePack, into our library, generating random convex hulls of circles on the sphere, and projecting points, lines, circles, and arcs from the sphere onto a 2D plane. This week was all about taking these advances from last week and finally starting to incorporate …

Circle Packings – Week 5

While sadly there were no hikes this week, we did continue to make some pretty nice progress on our circle packing library. One of the main things that we worked on towards the beginning of the week was integrating code from a software called CirclePack into our own library, so that we would be able to …

Circle Packings – Week 4

Have you ever hiked with a group of mathematicians? Me neither -- until yesterday. This week, Professor Bowers hosted a circle packing workshop here at JMU where various researchers in the field came together to explore, discuss, and collaborate on all things circle-packing. I was extremely lucky that it took place during my time here with the …

Circle Packings – Week 3

     Another week another programming language (yay!). This week it was Kotlin, a very clean and concise language that is fully interoperable with Java, and the language that Professor Bowers has been developing his circle packing code library in. We've been working with IntelliJ IDEA, a Java IDE that understands many other languages as well, including Kotlin, and …

Circle Packings – Week 2

Last Friday, Professor Bowers and I met with physicist Professor Feitosa, who has been studying the structure of foam bubbles as part of his ongoing research. Soap bubbles are a type of surface known as a minimal surface, which is one that locally minimizes its area, and therefore its energy as well. These minimal surfaces show up in all different physical places, from the …

Circle Packings – Week 1

While I did a little bit of mentored research during high school, this program is my first time doing real, full-fledged research at the undergraduate level. Outside of my normal academic work, my learning experiences have otherwise been mostly limited to extracurriculars and internships. While these have been invaluable, this year I realized how crucial it was that I gain research experience …