Prime Spiral

2015-05-30, post № 33

mathematics, programming, Pygame, Python, #around, #around the center, #generates, #generator, #gray, #image, #lines, #pattern, #patterns, #prime, #prime generator, #prime lines, #red, #spiral

Being fascinated by prime numbers I wanted to create a prime number spiral generator myself. It just goes through the numbers from 𝟢 to … and checks if they are prime. If they are prime, this rectangle in the spiral gets lit red, if it is not prime it gets lit dark gray. Because my algorithm for prime checking is very basic, I implemented a performance helper. That way the spiral’s creation will slow down after time (due to the numbers that need to be checked getting bigger and bigger). The really interesting thing is, that — although they may seem random — prime numbers often form lines if shown in such a spiral. To see the comparison I included an image of a randomly (𝟧𝟢 ％ to 𝟧𝟢 ％) lit up board.