Built to
understand.
Interactive explainers, tools and videos I've built with Claude, usually because I wanted to understand something well enough to play with it. Alongside them: side projects and hobbies I'm keeping a record of.
Family Tree
Seven generations and 127 direct ancestors, charted by where and when they were born, how far they travelled, and how two continents of people converged on Utah.
The p-adic Numbers
One prime at a time: a number system where two numbers are close when their difference is divisible by a high power of a prime, and …4444 really does equal −1.
The Left Hand of Nature
How would you explain "left" to an alien using only text? The story of parity violation, from the theta-tau puzzle to Wu's cobalt experiment and the Ozma problem.
Seestar Shoot Planner
Plans a night of deep-sky imaging with a Seestar smart telescope: what is up, when it clears the horizon, how the Moon and clouds interfere, and what to shoot in what order.
Penrose Tiling
Kites and darts: two tiles that cover the plane forever without ever repeating. Pan, zoom and dive into the pattern.
Orbital Elements Lab
A 3D Earth and satellite with a slider for each of the six Keplerian elements, real-orbit presets, and live period, altitude and drift readouts.
The Homestake Deficit
A 16-minute animated walk through Ray Davis's solar neutrino experiment, from the Sun's core to a tank of cleaning fluid a mile underground, and the missing neutrinos it found.
Weighing the Earth
Cavendish's 1798 torsion-balance experiment in 3D: the apparatus, the derivation of G, and a calculator to run the numbers yourself.
Cosmic Distance Ladder
Nine rungs, from Eratosthenes' shadow to the edge of the observable universe. Each measurement you make becomes the ruler for the next.