Eden Growth of a Cluster - Isaac Rogers
Hometown: Washingtonville, New York
Class Year: 2010
Major: Electrical Engineering
Research Advisor: Prof. Gary Reich
Project Description:
The research I did this summer involved writing a computer program that modified a "cluster" using an Eden Growth method. A cluster's just a group of adjacent occupied nodes on a grid. By manipulating the size and shape of this cluster, we can model all kinds of real-life things - spread of disease vectors, growth of cancerous cells, liquids moving through a porous medium. We "grow" the cluster by picking a perimeter site - an unoccupied node adjacent to the cluster - and changing it into an occupied site. (Perimeter sites are marked in red on the diagram, occupied sites are marked in blue.) In addition to writing this program, I spent some time testing a random number generator, and using a high-speed camera to film springs compressing.