The universe at the roll of a dice

Ever tried plotting the orbit of planets using dice? That was the unusual challenge I faced when I programmed the Computer Modelling exhibit at The Royal Observatory.

The idea is a deceptively simple one. You take a selection of dice with different symbols on them, arrange them under a video camera, then watch as the dice turn into planets and begin to orbit one another. The size of the die dictates the mass of the planet, while the number of arrows in each symbol controls the speed.

To correctly interpret the dice I used specialist ‘machine vision’ cameras to read the faces of the dice. The camera had on-board microchips that I was able to programme  to recognise the different symbols and feed this information into the exhibit.

Now make it real

The challenge didn’t stop there! Working with top astronomers, I then had to program a real time gravitational simulation using millions of calculations per second. It really was rocket science. It took me several weeks just to get the HUGE algorithms to work in real-time.

The finished interactive makes a complex process simple and understandable. The exhibit lets you to create your own gravity simulation in seconds using a unique tangible interface that doesn’t require a PhD to use.

If you have enjoyed this, why not check out these other interesting things?