The goal of this exercise is to simulate and visualize the temperature distribution in a material retrieved from Neal Wagner's "The Distillation of Human Knowledge" cartoon (Wagner, 1978). Considering the geometry and the boundary conditions specified in the cartoon, the simulation consists of a continuous application of a two-dimensional Laplace equation using finite differences.

The material was discretized into a mesh of quadrangular elements with customizable size (resolution) uniform temperature. Initially all the interior elements have the same costumizable temperature (init_temp). Furthermore, the simulation ends when the sum of temperature differences between same elements of consecutive iterations reaches a pre-determined value (threshold). The following values were assigned:

• init_temp = 90
• resolution = 13
• threshold = 10

In order to access the visualization, it's necessary to have Python installed with all the modules specified in the requirements file. Afterwards, the visualization can be launched by running simulation.py.

On Windows:

pip install -r requirements.txt

python simulation.py

• Wagner, N. (1978) The Distillation of Human Knowledge. In Kaufman, R. E., A FORTRAN Coloring Book. MIT Press.