Proof by animation

Posted on September 20, 2006 by Brent

A proof of the Pythagorean Theorem:

[java_applet]

Cool, huh? If you don’t immediately see how it’s a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem… just stare at it for a while. =) You can pause the animation (and then restart it again) by clicking on it with the mouse. I made this using the programming language Processing, which is a lot like Java except it has all kinds of graphics stuff built in.

(Please bear with me if it doesn’t work, I’ve never tried embedding a Java applet in a post before… if it doesn’t work for you, let me know in a comment. And by the way, there’s a very good chance the applet won’t work if you are reading this in a newsreader or in an e-mail; to get the full applet-y goodness, visit the original post.)

About Brent

Associate Professor of Computer Science at Hendrix College. Functional programmer, mathematician, teacher, pianist, follower of Jesus.
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2 Responses to Proof by animation

  1. maria yu says:
    December 14, 2006 at 11:17 am

    Hi,

    I like your applet very much!
    I came to your site from the original post. I downloaded the plug-in but my applet won’t load. I wonder if it’s because I used .class and .life rather than .jar.
    I left a comment on the original post but haven’t got a reply yet so I thought maybe you had a clue. Here is my code:

    (I changed from ” to ‘ so it can display here.)

    I have this block of code in my wordpress single.php file.

    Thank you,

    Maria

  2. Brent says:
    December 14, 2006 at 11:32 am

    Hi Maria,

    Thanks for the kind words!

    Sorry, I’m a little confused — first, what do you mean by “the original post”? And second, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to include an applet in your own wordpress blog?

Comments are closed.