A finite nuclear model using density functions
Thanush Patlolla · Cary, North Carolina
Ninth Place ($50,000) · Regeneron Science Talent Search · 2025
A finite nuclear model built on density functions to map electron distributions, improving predictions of energy distribution over the standard treatment.
Reported a 0.6% increase in the accuracy of energy distribution predictions.
A 0.6% improvement sounds small and is not: in a mature computational field the remaining error is the hard part, and being precise about a small gain is more honest than inflating it.
- Density functional methods
- Finite nuclear modelling
- Electron distribution mapping
- Accuracy comparison against a reference
- A small improvement in a mature field can be a large result — give the context that shows why
- Report the gain you measured, at the precision you measured it
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