diff --git a/readme.md b/readme.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..987ec69 --- /dev/null +++ b/readme.md @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ + + +* HIJ FONG ! + +** Background: Chaos Mathematics + +This game is based on chaos mathemeatics. +Back in the 1980's a computer scientist/matmmmatician +Benort Mandelbrot discovered some maths functions that +behaved in very stange ways. Instead of smoothly changing +they became chaotic and unpredictable. + +This facinated the IBM scientist (who incidentally, was also paid by his employer to +go up in planes and observe another chaotic phenomenem, the random shapes of clouds). + +** Natural Chaos: Nature will find a way + +The film Jurasic park features a chaos mathmetician brought in to +look at the park and decide whether it was safe or not. +He conclusded it was not. Nature would find a way to adapt, and +what they had done at the park was introduce a life form. Life forms can +adapt and change. He reasoned that the dinosaurs in the park, would adapt, and +later escape from the island causing a disaster! +As we know from the film, this did not take long! + +Another example of chaos in nature was the spraying of crops by DDT +in the 1950's and 60's. At first all the insects died off and the farmers +had far better crop yields (but also poisoned all the fish in the rivers and killed many wild birds). +But, a tiny proportion of the insects, through the natural chaos +of DNA mutation, because resistant. This tiny proportion that could cope with DDT +grew in population rapidly and after a few years caused worse crop yields than before DDT +was introduced. Anyone interested in this should read "silent spring" by "rachel carson" +writtin in 1962. + +** How to play + +The program featured here starts with a blank tk graphics window. By clicking the mouse +the chaotic function is revealed. Where in a stable zone the pixel is black. +In a very chaotic zone the pixel is white. In a zone near the stable zone +the pixel will be grey. Very near the ragged edge of the stable zone +pixels will be coloured. +The aim of the game is to find a pixel in the middle of the chaotic and +the stable zone. +Once this is clicked on the entire shape, previously hidden, is drawn in full on the screen. + +Enjoy the chaos! + +** For Maths people + +This game secretly rotates and resizes the hidden mandelbrot shape. +It does this using complex numbers which naturally have an angle of rotation +and a sizing factor associated with them. +Complex numbers are a pair of numbers, one real, the type of number +we use every day, and a stranger one, an imaginary one. +The imaginary one when multiplied by itsself becaomes a real number but minus! +Most maths people use the term 'i' to denote a number if imaginary, +but people who live in the real world, like electronic engineers +(and python programmers) use 'j'. +In fact, most 3D games now used a 4 dimiensional version of complex numbers +called quaternions to rotate objects in the computer for you to shoot at! +