“Watching primes born was never more exciting, or slow.
Moulick ( Bengali for Prime) is an Arduino powered mathematical toy that endlessly computes primes and shows fun statistics about them as it goes along.Watching primes born was never more exciting, or slow. Moulik starts from 2 and takes you primally all the way out to 10 decimal digits at a recklessly unsafe speed (for an Arduino, that is)*. Heres a video of Moulick in action.
*10 decimal digits will not be achieved in a single lifetime. Your mileage may vary. Offer void where prohibited by law. Primes are facts of nature and can not be owned, bought, sold or patented.
As a kid I was really into electronic circuits and microprocessors and robots. I still am, but a day job that also involves computers and (when I was a postdoc/grad student) electronics, dampens the ardor for tinkering at home. I do more gardening and woodwork nowadays when I get the time. This is my excuse for not having done an Arduino project yet. But, better late than never!
I was inspired by Karl Lautmans Primer toy. Primer requires you to push a button to get to the next prime and is limited to 6 or 7 digits. Its main charm is that it noisily clacks from one prime to another as it uses a mechanical counter as its display.
Moulicks primary (heh heh) charm lies in watching it whizz past the smaller primes and then slowly get bogged down leaving you to bite your nails as you wait to find out if that next number is a prime, or just a very nasty composite and cheer when twin primes find themselves next to each other and gasp when an even rarer palindromic prime makes an appearance.”