CodeRecorded August 15, 202653 models
Drop the slinky
Simulate a hanging slinky, release it, and watch the bottom. Nearly every model knows the counter-intuitive answer as a fact and will assert it in the write-up; far fewer produce a simulation that actually does it, because it only emerges if you start from the true stretched equilibrium. The gap between the claim and the canvas is the entire challenge.
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The prompt every model got
You build physics demonstrations for a science museum. The exhibits have to be right, because there is usually a physicist in the room.
Build me the falling slinky.
The exhibit
A single HTML page. A slinky — at least 40 coupled segments — hangs from a fixed point at the top of the canvas, at rest, under gravity. Then it is released.
Controls:
- Release — lets go of the top. Reset — hangs it back up, at rest.
- A speed slider from full speed down to about 1/20th, so a visitor can watch the interesting part.
- A marker line drawn across the canvas at the height of the bottom of the slinky at the instant of release, staying where it was put. Visitors need something to compare against.
- A running clock in milliseconds since release.
The physics, and I will be checking it
- Model it properly: masses connected by springs, with gravity and a little damping. Hooke's law between neighbours, integrated over small time steps.
- The hanging state must be the true equilibrium. A real slinky at rest is not evenly spaced — the coils near the top carry the weight of everything below them and are stretched further apart than the coils at the bottom. Your initial condition must have this. Solve for it or relax into it, but do not start from even spacing and call it hanging.
- The integrator must be stable at the stiffness you choose. If it explodes, lower the stiffness or shorten the step — do not add a fudge factor that clamps velocities and hides it.
- No scripted behaviour. Every segment obeys the same rules. Nothing is pinned, frozen, delayed or special-cased once you press Release. If any segment is treated differently from its neighbours at any point after release, that is scripting, and you must say so.
Answers
Sorted by score, then cost. Open a row to load its answer.
