Talk:Thomson problem

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[edit] external links

My page http://www.ogre.nu/sphere.htm collects many links on this and other sphere arrangement problems. Is it worth citing here? —Tamfang 03:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

See also http://cgafaq.info/wiki/Evenly_distributed_points_on_sphere —Tamfang 07:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] annotations wanted

Where did the table come from? What is \mathbf{r}_{i}? —Tamfang 06:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, whoever put up this list should have added some explanations...! I guess I've figured it out by now. r_i of course are the positions of the points (charges), thus \sum r_i is essentially the center of mass. Theta_1 must be the smallest angle between any 2 points, no? Then we imagine to make each configuration into a (convex) polyhedron, thus nu_3, nu_4 etc are the numbers of vertices where 3,4... edges meet, e the total number of edges, f_3, f_4 number of triangle and quadrilateral faces.

Yes, and where did the list come from? (I take it that only for small numbers it is proven that these are the actual mimimum energy configuration...!) Also in order would be a link for the symmetry type notation, e.g. the article on point groups in 3D: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_groups_in_three_dimensions [Also: From 160 on there are gaps in the list. No data, or simply C_1 (no symmetry)?]85.0.224.208 (talk) 20:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I've now added a paragraph at the top of the table, explaining the table entries. (Hope it's ok...) 85.3.160.49 (talk) 12:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)