Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sometimes They Come Back

So I'm working through a great Python book by Andy Harris, and I'm running a little orbit simulator.

You can the original orbit that my space ship was in (the oval shape that fits on the screen). I hit the thruster a bit too much and altered the orbit (the oval that goes OFF the screen). My ship seemed lost in space and time, as I started to think about Kepler's brilliant 2nd law. In short, if my ship was to return, it would be a while.

Python, however, deals well with really large numbers. If your program requires them, Python will supply them. Printing a googol in Python is no problemo. So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

My wife came in and asked me to help her move some furniture in our guest bedroom. Later, I came back and the orbit was complete: my ship had returned home. Sometimes they come back.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does it work? Its all a number thing? And can you really sit and watch a line on your screen orbit in circles? This sounds rather interesting to me.

CJTURTkey

Unknown said...

The ship operates the same way the ships in the old arcade game Asteroids worked. I'll have to show this to you sometime. Could be the basis of a video game.

Anonymous said...

Hope to see a new post soon Mr G.

CJTURT

Big Sis said...

"Sometimes they come back"

....and sometimes they don't. :(

Unknown said...

Yeah. Man I miss Min Min. In fact, I don't even care about my blog anymore. I wonder how you dealt with Jazmine's passing away....

I have been looking at the boxer rescue dogs in Denver....

Maybe something to patch this hole in my soul.