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All Shapes in One Equation?
asadodetira writes ""One simple equation can generate a vast diversity of natural shapes, a Belgian biologist has discovered. Nature has the story. "The Superformula" sounds impressive, apparently its only for shapes, i thought you could solve lots of PDE's or tensor integrals or something with this, but not, it's only for shapes."
Yeah, what useless crap. It only applies directly to everything we know in the universe.
No really, it isn't all that useful. If it were somehow applicalbe to partial differential equations, for example, it might offer a simple way of handling many engineering problems.
Granted, being able to describe shapes with a function can be terribly useful, as it might then become possible to use linear algebra or calculus to directly solve various problems relating to that shape's geometry rather than approximating a solution.
But still, that's just shapes. There's a lot more to the universe than shapes. And no, I'm not willing to consider something like a function of two variables a shape just because it can be plotted in three dimensions.
He's discovered the Spirograph!