Today, let’s have some fun playing with perspective rendering in Python! My graphics package of choice is VPython:

sudo apt-get install python-visual

Suppose we want to represent a simple cubic lattice: Using the visual package, we can create a collection of spheres at positions ((i,j,k)) with (i,j,k = -L…L).

from visual import sphere
L = 5
R = 0.3
for i in range(-L,L+1):
 for j in range(-L,L+1):
  for k in range(-L,L+1):
   sphere(pos=[i,j,k],radius=R)

Resulting in this beautiful rendering:

But what if we want to change the color? Simply alter the last line:

sphere(pos=[i,j,k],radius=R).color = color.blue

Less atoms? Alter the value of L.

L = 1

Same number of atoms with smaller radii? Alter the value of R.

R = 0.2

Want more advanced computational physics with Python?