Using Mathematica to decorate Easter Eggs

Kathryn writes, "I spent a while last night and this morning decorating Easter eggs in Mathematica and this activity has proved wildly popular in this household: My children are going to run me out of toner in my color printer very shortly. My daughter has made a document entitled 'My Little Egg Book' out of egg printouts." Link, Link to equations for egg shapes

[#1 posted by Tom , March 8, 2008 8:30 AM]

I've been using Mathematica since just before the 2.0 release, and have recently switched to Sage. Haven't given it a real killer workout yet, but everything I've tried, it has done, and done well. It includes some fairly extensive graphics support, so Easter eggs shouldn't be a problem.

Sage is open source under GPL 2 and written in Python. It incorporates a lot of excellent scientific code already available in Python (Numpy, Scipy, etc.) with the advantage of a uniform interface. It seems to be reaching critical mass in the community, and it has the huge advantage over Mathematica et al that you can get at the code and see exactly what it is doing.

Definitely worth a look.

[#2 posted by yankeeknowhow , March 8, 2008 3:16 PM]

This is deee-lightful! My kids spend so much time on the computer...this is a good way for them to partake in the wonderful Easter holiday without having to leave the constrants of their computers - great!

[#3 posted by Anonymous , March 8, 2008 6:13 PM]

Very resourceful page, on egg shapes.

[#4 posted by the specialist , March 9, 2008 12:56 PM]

gee i hope you are also letting them enjoy real world egg dying as well....

[#5 posted by Anonymous , March 9, 2008 5:03 PM]

You do realize, of course, that gold leaf-encrust on real eggs would be much, much cheaper.

You are paying HP approximately $4,500 per gallon for that printer ink.

[#6 posted by the specialist , March 10, 2008 11:37 AM]

um, disconnect, go OUTSIDE and color and hide some eggs. work on you tan a little.

[#7 posted by Michael Zed , March 10, 2008 3:25 PM]

The tradition of computer-generated Easter eggs dates back over three decades.

* World's Largest Easter Egg
* Understanding the World's Largest Pysanka

[#8 posted by hamptonio , March 13, 2008 10:45 AM]

Cory, don't use Mathematica, use Sage (free and open source)! It can paint eggs too:

http://wiki.sagemath.org/interact#eggpaint

-M. Hampton

[#9 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , March 13, 2008 11:40 AM]

Hamptonio, it's Kathryn Cramer who's doing it, not Cory.

[#10 posted by Kathryn Cramer , March 14, 2008 9:47 AM]

Regarding whether I let the kids touch Real Eggs, you can see our Paas-dyed eggs in Flickr. Phineas & Furb were a popular theme, as were portrait eggs. We worked on the Mathematica eggs while the chicken eggs were in the dye bath.