Things at the New Forest Observatory have just gone plain stupid. About 2 years ago I wanted to make a 3D Sunflower seed pattern using Mathematica, so that I could visualise an object that could be based on the Golden Solid Angle. I failed miserably – I couldn’t do it as my Mathematica programing is just rubbish, and I gave up. But after yesterday’s encounters with ChatGPT where it gave me the value for the Golden Solid Angle, I thought I would try the impossible – I would see if ChatGPT could generate the code that I couldn’t- AND – of course it could. I didn’t define the problem strictly enough for ChatGPT to give me the code I wanted on the first try. ChatGPT gave me the top picture which shows a Sunflower seed pattern running round the outside of a cone-shape, but the inside of the cone is empty. The middle picture shows this cone-shaped Sunflower pattern from a top view. So I then re-defined the problem in how I wanted the pattern to be drawn and ChatGPT came back with the pattern you can see at the bottom. Now this is almost exactly what I wanted, and is close enough to see what I wanted to know. Basically ChatGPT together with Mathematica has opened up a whole new world for me and I’ll be disappearing off to explore that New World for quite some time.
