Create functionality for calculating dimensionless plasma parameters about plasmapy HOT 10 CLOSED

def Douglas_Adams_number():
    return 42

from plasmapy.

Unless somebody has already started work on this, I'd like to contribute here. I'll update each time I add functionality and be happy to coordinate with anyone else working on this to avoid duplication.
I'll be starting with Mach_number unless someone is already working on it

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Hey, I believe Nick has already done some work on this in #34 , #60 and possibly some others. I don't think we have the Mach number just yet, though, so if you could look over there, that'd be amazing! Thanks for the heads up!

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I haven't worked on Mach_number yet so it would be great if you could! I'm in the middle of working on Coulomb_logarithm at the moment.

from plasmapy.

Some other ones:

• Knudsen number
• Degeneracy parameter (theta = thermal kinetic energy / Fermi energy)
• coupling parameter ( Gamma = Coulomb potential between two particles / thermal kinetic energy)

Also it would be cool to have a Plasma object where one defines the temperature, density etc, and then call a method on the object which then calculates all the dimensionless parameters and let's you know what regimes your plasma is in.

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Yeah, we were thinking about having a PlasmaBlob object that would include those quantities without bothering with spatial data. That'd fit that.

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I've sort of started this by adding a module with coupling parameter function in PR #191 . Once I finish and merge that we can add more dimensionless parameter functions.

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We should be careful with which functions we put in here... For example, the quantum degeneracy parameter is often used in calculating other quantum functions, but it depends on the Fermi energy. So placing ideal_chemical_potential in quantum.py which depends on degeneracy_parameter in dimensionsless.py, which depends on Fermi_energy in quantum.py is a no go due to circular dependencies.

One way around this might be to simply use dimensionless.py as a dummy module for importing names of functions which are dimensionless from their respective modules.

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is Prandtl_number available? If the answer is yes I would like to be sure if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prandtl_number is the correct formula so I can start to code this new function in PlasmaPy/plasmapy/formulary/dimensionless.py file

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Closing this since we have the bulk of these now in plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless. If we decide to add more, it'd probably be most sensible to have a separate issue for each additional dimensionless parameter.

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