Author: Geeks out of the Box

This is a blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. We write this blog together, share their projects and thoughts on their journey towards self-dicovery. They’re growing up in a supportive non-coercive learning environment. We deeply believe in interest-based, self-paced education and have had to move countries to make this possible as a family. Visit Simon’s website at https://simontiger.com/ We are a family from Amsterdam who moved to Antwerp because homeschooling is illegal in The Netherlands. This blog started as https://antwerpenhomeschooling.wordpress.com in March 2016. Over the years, most of our entries have gravitated towards exploring together with Simon as he has developed an insatiable passion for programming, math and science. His sister Neva is treading on his heals. We changed or name to Geeks of the Box in May 2021.
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Singing bottles, negative kelvins and resolving Zeno’s paradox

Picking up hiking keeps leading to beautiful conversations and thought experiments on the way. Yesterday, on our longest hike so far (over 8 km, partially in the sand), as we … Continue reading Singing bottles, negative kelvins and resolving Zeno’s paradox

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Test Tube Games

Simon has had hours of fun with Test Tube Games, a science games portal featuring interactive explanations and dynamic puzzles on Chemistry and Physics. He has created two simulations based … Continue reading Test Tube Games

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Tchisla Clone

Simon is working on a clone of Tchisla, an absorbing number puzzle app from the (Russian!!) creators of Euclidea. The aim is to represent numbers as arithmetical expressions using only … Continue reading Tchisla Clone

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A Small Program that Doubles Itself

I wrote a small program that copies itself. When the program doubles itself it executes itself twice. The code that doubles itself is now doubled. The second time you run … Continue reading A Small Program that Doubles Itself

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Simon’s Halting Problem Gist

You can easily turn every statement into a program. If the program stops, or “halts”, then the statement is true, and if it never stops, or “loops”, the statement is … Continue reading Simon’s Halting Problem Gist

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Our New Craze: Euclidea

Simon is obsessed with Euclidea https://www.euclidea.xyz/ — a learning environment for geometric constructions and proofs. He has also downloaded the Euclidea app (which has more features), so that he could continue engaging … Continue reading Our New Craze: Euclidea

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Question Bot

Simon has built a question bot that will collect questions on The Coding Train Discord so that Daniel Shiffman can answer them during the following live session. This is something … Continue reading Question Bot

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Math To Go

Thanks to our usual summer hang-outs (Dutch beaches, local playgrounds and terraces) being closed, we have discovered that Simon doesn’t hate small hikes in the woods after all. At least … Continue reading Math To Go

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How Can Math Help Resolve Racial Segregation?

This is Simon’s contribution to #blacklivesmatter How Can Math Help Resolve Racial Segregation? This video and coding project is based on Segregation Solitaire by Thomas Schelling, an American mathematician and … Continue reading How Can Math Help Resolve Racial Segregation?

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Physics Engine using Verlet Integration

Simon created a physics engine in Python with Turtle. He used Verlet integration (French pronunciation: ​[vɛʁˈlɛ]), a numerical method for integrating Newton’s equations of motion in calculating trajectories of particles in molecular … Continue reading Physics Engine using Verlet Integration

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Watching Bob and Doug start a new era of space exploration

We watched both on Wednesday, May 27 and Saturday, May 30 when it actually happened: the historic launch of Crew Dragon Demo-2, a commercial state-of-the-art aircraft, marking the start of … Continue reading Watching Bob and Doug start a new era of space exploration