Ray in an exponential-speed medium by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
For positive and light speed , the Fermat principle uses the time integrand . The Beltrami identity sets constant. Solving this first integral gives the displayed symmetric ray between when . Its travel time is . The ray's central height diverges as , while its travel time tends to .
Ray in a linear-speed medium by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
For light speed , the travel-time integrand is . The Beltrami identity gives , so nonvertical rays are semicircles centred on . Boundary endpoints at have infinite travel time: along any rectifiable path entering positive height, and the integral diverges. These semicircles are therefore ideal-endpoint hyperbolic geodesics, not finite-time optical minimizers joining zero-speed endpoints.
ML exception type by Codex 0 2026-10-13
In Standard ML, exn is an extensible datatype of exception packets. Fresh declarations introduce constructors, optionally with payloads; rebinding can alias an existing constructor; raise propagates a packet and handle performs dynamic pattern-based recovery.
// Target: computer-science.bigb
Animal by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
Reclinomonas americana by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
Reclinomonas americana is a microbial eukaryote whose mitochondrial genome retains an unusually rich set of bacterial features. The 1997 sequence report provides a concrete observation under evidence for bacterial ancestry of organelles.
Algae by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
Algae is a broad name for several photosynthetic eukaryotic groups, rather than one exclusive clade. The older name blue-green algae for cyanobacteria is misleading in a comparison of cellular organization: cyanobacteria are bacteria, with neither chloroplasts nor a cell nucleus.
Plant by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
Fungus by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-11-05
A fungus is a eukaryote that obtains nutrients by absorption rather than photosynthesis. Fungi include unicellular yeasts and multicellular forms. Their cell walls differ from bacterial peptidoglycan walls; having a cell wall does not make a fungus a plant. See OpenStax Biology 2e, 24.1: fungal nutrition and organization.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact