Paul Kaplan

I am migrating this blog over to a new one. Check it out for more photos and current projects.

experiments

Pixel Printer

Pixel Printer

Tilt Maze

Tilt Maze

CAD

CAD

Lathe

Lathe

Molecular Dynamics

Molecular Dynamics

Tower

Tower

Ant Chase

Ant Chase

Editor

Editor

Motorcycle

Motorcycle

Chaos

Chaos

Lightboard

Lightboard

Logistic map

Logistic map

recent posts

Hackathon Project: A Digital Lathe
25 Jan 2013
For our first (un)hackathon I really wanted to built an interface for designing some kind of 3D object in browser, and have it come off the web and directly into the 3D printer (i.e. in an STL file). I wanted to attack objects of "reduced dimensionality": objects that are technically 3D objects in their final form but can be easily... more
Tower Jenga
23 Dec 2012
While I set out to make a game of jenga, trying to see if I could do the same thing with cannon.js as they do with the Physi.js example, I ended up figuring out how to build the tower iteratively then having way more fun blowing up the tower with projectiles. So I give you, the new and improved Jenga... more

about me

I'm a senior at the University of Chicago majoring in Physics. I'm also a developer, a javascript junkie in particular, but also pretty handy with Ruby, Rails, Python and C. I am a scientist at heart, I have worked on things as theoretical as dark matter all the way down to the mechanical properties of 3D printed particles.

I love having the freedom, creativity and skill set to follow my nose, and I have had the unique opportunity to stick my nose into just about everything.

Below you'll find a small sampling of the things I've made over my years in college. These are not finished products by any means, but they give a good sense of what I like and how I like doing it. If you want more, check out my resume

scientific research

Granular Materials - University of Chicago

I'm currently working on "designed aggregates", basically piles of different shaped particles, to find specific force characteristics of jammed granular systems using 3D printing, fast X-Ray imaging and computed tomography.

Particle Astrophysics - Columbia University

I also spent two summers at Columbia on a Dark Matter balloon project, including a month at the Space Sciences Lab at Berkeley fabricating the balloon and detectors.

Publications

  • Aggregate properties of Platonic solids and beyond - (Poster, 2012)
  • Development of large format Si(Li) detectors for the GAPS dark matter experiment - (2012)

in the community

hack@uchicago

A group for students interested in all types of computer, electronics and hardware hacking. We hold weekly hack nights for students to work on independent or group projects and see demos by local programmers and artists.

DVL: Data Visualization Lab

My second Uncommon Fund Project was funded earlier this year to build a large multitouch surface for interactive, interdisciplinary data visualizations.

contact

You can email me or find me in the usual places