Just posting a follow-up comment to say that the interactive simulation is really the highlight of this set of pages. I was expecting a trivial demo widget, along the lines of the animated GIFs in the article, but it's actually a full 3D rigid-body simulation.
Playing around with blocks and ramps in a browser does a great job of taking the mathematical analysis given in the article, and making it at least somewhat intuitively understandable. But on the other hand, it doesn't exactly make a convincing case that a world built according to these rules could ever be stable!
Playing around with blocks and ramps in a browser does a great job of taking the mathematical analysis given in the article, and making it at least somewhat intuitively understandable. But on the other hand, it doesn't exactly make a convincing case that a world built according to these rules could ever be stable!
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DICHRONAUTS/02/Inte...