Brent Cullimore
To say that Pythagoras, who lived over 2500 years ago, would be astounded by what I just did in his honor says nothing. I mean, let’s face it: he’d be astounded by kale chips, boomerangs, and tubas.
So I didn’t do it for him. I didn’t do it for any valid reason, really.
I’ve always been impressed that a mathematical theorem can be demonstrated visually in a few seconds, providing such a strong intuitive grasp. Plus, there are bubbles and waves, which always attract my attention.
Amazingly, it took me a couple of years to realize that I could simulate this using FloCAD Compartments. Then a couple of more minutes to wonder whether I should ... before I dismissed that silly notion.
You can’t see the liquid, just the water/air interface. So I tilted the view a bit so the interface looked like a surface rather than a line.
I just used a 5x5x1 cm block initially on top of 4x4x1 cm and 3x3x1 cm blocks. Small compared to what was in the video, but since there is no information about the hole or slot sizes, it’s all a guesswork homage anyway. I had to adjust the flow resistances until the timing was about right.
Of course, Thermal Desktop wants to solve for temperatures even if you don’t care, so you can see some slight temperature changes as slight compression and expansion occur. But this is an easy model to make. I left the grid visible so you could visually see the volume sizes too.
The only hard part is the chug-chug office-watercooler action of the holes, which you can see is somewhat violent and chaotic in the original video. If it had been a vertical duct, I could have applied slip flow and been done with it. But in slot with liquid falling and bubbles rising against that liquid flow … yikes. Thankfully, some “two holes in parallel” methods had been developed for this boat fuel tank model already.
Now, if anyone out there wants to build an infinite number of N-dimensional Compartment models to demonstrate Fermat's Last Theorem, you will have out-geeked me.