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Visualizing the Kochen-Specker paradox

The Kochen-Specker paradox is a paradox from quantum mechanics. If you are unfamiliar with it, you can find a really short introduction here. In my research I came across the need of visualizing the paradox, explicitly rendering the different known proofs graphically. So I wrote a program that lets you play around with them and produce images like this:

[Example of
    visualization of the Kochen-Specker paradox]

Since other researchers and teachers may find use of this program I have decided to release it under the GNU General Public License. So, it is Free Software, and you can use it and redistribute it at will. If you want to modify it, please let me know. I'd be happy to know that people use it and I'll try my best to fix any bugs or enhance functionality.

Download a copy of the code:

You'll need an interpreter for Python with the wxPython extension, which is available for Unix, Mac and Windows at the Python download website and the wxPython download site.

Run the program, and try things out. The dots on the sphere are a graphical representation of the coloring of the direction from the origin to the center of that dot. The dots can be painted: left-click will paint a dot green, and right-click or shift-left-click will paint it red. Orthogonal triads will be painted "one green and two red". In manual mode colours of orthogonal directions will be suggested, and in automatic mode, the colours will be automatically filled in. There is also a mode which will show the greatcircle orthogonal to a green dot, as visible above. You can also clear colors and try another coloring, and so on.

Problems, praise, suggestions? Let me know.

Jan-Åke Larsson
 

Jan-Åke Larsson

Kontakt:

Institutionen för Systemteknik
Linköpings Universitet

+46(0)13 281468

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Informationsansvarig: Jan-Åke Larsson
Senast uppdaterad: 2010-11-10