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"Computing at the Edge: Capturing a flame's flicker, an ink jet's splatter, and other shifting shapes," by Ivars Peterson. Science News, 10 April 1999, pages 232-234.
The surface of a breaking wave is jagged and rapidly changing. It is an of example turbulent behavior that can result from forces acting at the boundary between two different materials. This complicated behavior is difficult to describe mathematically. This article describes a new approach being used to model such situations. Called the level-set approach, it involves modeling the two-dimensional boundary as part of a three-dimensional surface. It turns out that from the three-dimensional perspective, the changes in the boundary are smoother. The method is being used to detect edges in scanned medical images, model the growth of crystals, and create special effects for movies.
--- Elizabeth Moisan
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