Light Simulator

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  ~ an alluring sunset over a digital ocean~

Inspiration

Our inspiration was originally Isaac Newton's experiments with the prisms and also the discovery of the shape of DNA. This optics simulator would have given us a chance to dive into the world of optics and explore what Python had to offer in terms of simulation.

What it does

At the moment, not much. We had higher hopes for our project, but the groundwork of the light rays, their colour interactions, and basic behaviour with both straight and curved surfaces is all coded out.

How we built it

We used pygame to work with objects and draw out the path of the rays.

Challenges we ran into

It was most of our team's first time coding in Python, and the vector math also proved to be very challenging. Nothing less can come of a physics simulation built from scratch!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We ran into multiple bugs in even drawing out the rays, but at the end we were happy with the result. There is a very noticeable point light source being drawn with a large amount of rays relatively fast.

What we learned

The most important lesson is to never underestimate how long one (seemingly) small bug can take to fix.

What's next for light

Travelling at the highest velocity in the universe! We plan to develop this point light source into a more complicated simulation involving refraction, lenses, and reflection. It was fun working on this project, and even though we didn't reach our end goal, we still are pleased with the lessons that this experience has taught us.

Built With

• python