Top all-time · #3751
COMSOL
Company blog · comsol.com/blogsscience
COMSOL is the company blog at comsol.com, writing about science. Since 2012, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite COMSOL blog posts as explanations for physics and engineering questions, such as LED emission spectra, Chladni plates, tennis racket tumbling and the cocktail party problem. None are praised directly.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
COMSOL develops multiphysics software used by engineers and researchers to simulate real-world designs, devices, and processes across industries.
Most-linked posts?
- /blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectra-from-common-light-sources/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-01-20
What Hacker News says?
You may be viewing the past with a rose filter. Incandescent light bulbs are nowhere near full spectrum. You have a decent analysis of the emitted frequencies here: https://www.comsol.com/blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectr...
Comment linking /blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectra-from-common-light-sources/
on “EU agrees on total ban of bee-harming pesticides”Submitted The Magnus Effect and the World Cup Match Ball as a story · 40 points
HN discussionLiquid metals can be pumped with a linear motor type magnetic field, with the liquid metal being the moving part.[1] But all this just to replace a battery? [1] https://www.comsol.com/model/inductive-liquid-metal-pump-590...
Comment linking /model/inductive-liquid-metal-pump-5907
on “A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine”Submitted Non-Newtonian Fluids: The Pouring Ketchup Quandary as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYes, e.g. bright, quality (e.g. LED), indoor light (without UV!) therapy can have benefits. https://www.comsol.com/blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectr... https://glarminy.com/2016/06/15/reduce-computer-eye-strain-h...
Comment linking /blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectra-from-common-light-sources/
on “Training Your Brain So That You Don’t Need Reading Glasses (2017)”Submitted How Do Chladni Plates Make It Possible to Visualize Sound? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSpin a coin on top of a glass table. Observe it from the top, and it spins either clockwise or anticlockwise. Observe it from the bottom and it's the opposite. There are no tables in space. Objects tumble while rotating. It seems we are measuring rotations using a fixed perspective when there is no reason to do so https://www.comsol.com/blogs/why-do-tennis-rackets-tumble-th...
Comment linking /blogs/why-do-tennis-rackets-tumble-the-dzhanibekov-effect-explained
on “James Webb Space Telescope reveals that most galaxies rotate clockwise”Comsol is a truly inspirational bit of software. Remarkably easy to get started but with a huge breadth and depth of applicability. I wish there were a way it could be made free. Like, I think it might not be a waste of money for a country to buy a country-wide site license for their citizens. A browse through their application gallery can be pretty interesting: https://www.comsol.com/models There's examples of stud…
Comment linking /models
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?”Sounds like the Cocktail party problem. https://www.comsol.com/blogs/have-you-heard-about-the-cockta...
Comment linking /blogs/have-you-heard-about-the-cocktail-party-problem/
on “Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming”20 years is equivalent to a couple of geological ages in tech, definitely not the "last few years" I was referring to. This article is from 2014 but hardly anything has changed. https://www.comsol.com/blogs/havent-cpu-clock-speeds-increas... https://superuser.com/questions/543702/why-are-newer-generat... https://i.stack.imgur.com/z94Of.png
Comment linking /blogs/havent-cpu-clock-speeds-increased-last-years/
on “24-core CPU and I can’t type an email – part two”I'm no optics expert, but considering the large width of the emission spectra of LEDs ( https://www.comsol.com/blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectr... ) and OLEDs ( https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/exploiting-the-poten... ), I'd say it's physically impossible to block their light to any acceptable degree of specificity.
Comment linking /blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectra-from-common-light-sources/
on “IRL Glasses Block All the Screens Around You”Here is a simple simulation of a bicycle's stability [1]. The simulation more or less predicts what happens in real life, so we do understand why bicycles are stable. As you can see from the simulation, this is a multibody dynamics problem. The bicycle and human have lots of moving parts, and as they move there are forces in 3D [2] amongst them. So there can't really be a simplified, short and mostly complete Englis…
Comment linking /blogs/simulating-the-motion-of-a-self-stable-bicycle/
on “Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019)”> those "Mandala" images Chladni Plates? A few links from past research: https://www.comsol.com/blogs/how-do-chladni-plates-make-it-p... Video example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPTnGEEoFf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_XL192wXw interactive version - https://www.dynamicmath.xyz/calculus/chladni-patterns/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFAcYruShow
Comment linking /blogs/how-do-chladni-plates-make-it-possible-to-visualize-sound/
on “A hidden gem in sound symmetry”https://www.comsol.com/paper/image/66162/big.png From the following paper: "Electromagnetic Simulation of Split-Core Current Transformer for Medium Voltage Applications" by N. Paudel, V. Siddharth, S. Shaw and D. Raschka (2018) https://www.comsol.com/paper/electromagnetic-simulation-of-s... Related: Learn everything about the Split-Core Current Transformer : https://innovatorsguru.com/split-core-current-transformer…
Comment linking /paper/electromagnetic-simulation-of-split-core-current-transformer-for-medium-voltage-66162
on “Autonomous Overhead Powerline Recharging for Uninterrupted Drone Operations [video]”ran into this graphic while installing some modeling software awhile back, shows thermal stress on the blades http://www.comsol.com/products/multiphysics/
Comment linking /products/multiphysics/
on “How SR-71 Blackbird Designers Overcame Canonical Jet Engine Limitations”Correct, one of the links in the article shows a pretty clear comparison between rainbow scale, how that looks to someone with color deficiency (with the dark portions on the ends), and their proposed scale. https://www.comsol.com/blogs/a-simulation-color-table-for-en... - midway down the page.
Comment linking /blogs/a-simulation-color-table-for-engineers-with-color-vision-deficiency
on “New Map Scale Is More Readable by People Who Are Color Blind”Unfortunately the finite element software used in the forecast requires a commercial license to run. https://www.comsol.com/products/licensing
Comment linking /products/licensing
on “Great timing, supercomputer upgrade lead to successful forecast of eruption”"CERN purchases multi-user licenses for COMSOL Multiphysics" https://www.comsol.com/press/news/article/821/ "Another factor that was attractive was the fact that a single network license allows CERN to run a COMSOL job on any number of cores or a compute cluster." And their "Floating Network License" allows use across an entire network, but not off that network: https://uk.comsol.com/products/licensing
Comment linking /press/news/article/821/
on “Do you have 30k CHF pocket money?”If you’ve got some money, https://www.comsol.com/blogs/6-examples-of-simulation-driven... Those examples wouldn’t be differentiable in the sense of automatic differentiation. “Just” parametric CAD + FEM/BEM + optimizer. Though differentiable FEM has kind of been done for a while under the name “adjoint method” for topology/shape optimization. It’s not super common outside of academia though. Personally, I’m keeping…
Comment linking /blogs/6-examples-of-simulation-driven-loudspeaker-development
on “Show HN: Design/build of some parametric speaker cabinets with OpenSCAD”What about a hybrid approach, as I think folks do right now more or less -- draw it out by eye, and then validate the design with simulation-software (e.g. https://www.comsol.com/microfluidics-module ) and iterate as needed from thereon. Your inclination toward a computational approach makes me think of what folks in mechanical engineering are up to these days. Creating mechanical designs generatively with topologic…
Comment linking /microfluidics-module
on “Miniaturization and Integration of 3D Printed Microfluidics”https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-98098-0_... states the same, and mentions what I couldn’t find earlier: that they criticized Fourier for his lack of rigour (I remember that as something along the lines of “but if that’s correct, this also is and that can’t be true, can it?” , (with “this” being Gibb’s phenomenon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon )), but chances are high that isn’t…
Comment linking /blogs/happy-birthday-joseph-fourier/
on “The Sad Story of Heisenberg's Doctoral Oral Exam (1998)”> and getting the next better thing... Implying an improvement , like phased array semiconductor microwaves, or something like that. Edit: Don't laugh, that actually was 'on the radar' about 10 years ago. IIRC the availability of the parts went away because the producing company has been bought by another, shifted goals, whatnot else. Anyways, no Sci-Fi: https://patents.google.com/patent/CN202733981U/en https://revi…
Comment linking /blogs/optimizing-microwave-ovens-with-solid-state-rf-cooking/
on “The Gas Industry Is Paying Instagram Influencers to Gush over Gas Stoves”I don't know the nitty-gritty of why, but some compute intensive tasks don't benefit from hyperthreading. If the processor is destined for those tasks, you may as well use that silicon for something actually useful. https://www.comsol.com/support/knowledgebase/1096
Comment linking /support/knowledgebase/1096
on “Intel's make-or-break 18A process node debuts for data center with 288-core Xeon”
