Animation Index
No animation is currently accepted into the reference asset set. This page defines the admission rules before animations are added.
Animations are powerful but risky. They can imply time evolution where a figure is only schematic, hide normalization drift, or make a gauge-dependent quantity look directly observable. An animation belongs in the reference layer only when its source, time scale, physical quantity, and validation status are explicit.
Admission Checklist
Section titled “Admission Checklist”An animation must record:
- source notebook or script,
- rendered asset path,
- canonical page,
- physical quantity shown,
- time variable and playback speed,
- parameter values,
- unit or dimensionless convention,
- validation check,
- alt text or transcript-style description,
- license status.
If the animation is schematic rather than numerically generated, that must be stated in the caption and nearby text.
Candidate Animation Families
Section titled “Candidate Animation Families”| Candidate | Purpose | Required Check |
|---|---|---|
| Gaussian packet spreading | show free-particle dispersion | norm conservation and analytic width |
| barrier wave-packet scattering | show incident, reflected, and transmitted probability | probability accounting and boundary separation |
| harmonic oscillator coherent state | show nondispersive oscillator motion | constant packet width and classical center motion |
| Rabi oscillations | show population transfer in a two-level system | analytic transition probability |
| Landau–Zener sweep | show avoided crossing and diabatic/adiabatic labels | transition probability convention |
| spin precession | show Bloch-vector motion | unitary rotation and norm preservation |
| Lindblad decay | show relaxation or dephasing | trace preservation and positivity |
Candidate animations are not accepted assets until their files and source records exist.
Accessibility
Section titled “Accessibility”Animations should not be the only way a reader receives information. Provide a caption or text description that states the same physical lesson. If the animation contains time-dependent data, summarize the endpoints, conserved quantities, and diagnostic values in text.
Avoid flashing, excessive looping, or motion that cannot be paused in the final presentation format.
Common Mistakes
Section titled “Common Mistakes”- Showing but captioning probability density.
- Omitting the time scale or unit convention.
- Hiding boundary reflections in a cropped frame.
- Animating a gauge-dependent wavefunction without a gauge label.
- Exporting from a notebook that has no validation cell.
- Treating smooth motion as evidence of numerical accuracy.
Cross-Links
Section titled “Cross-Links”References
Section titled “References”- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, Images Tutorial.
- Project Jupyter, Jupyter Documentation.
- Matplotlib Developers, Matplotlib Documentation.