Particle System

The term “particle system” was coined in 1983 by William T. Reeves as he worked to create the “Genesis” effect at the end of the movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/particles/

ref.
traer.physics

“A particle system is a collection of many many minute particles that together represent a fuzzy object. Over a period of time, particles are generated into a system, move and change from within the system, and die from the system.”

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Willian T. Reeves <Particle Systems—a Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects>

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/357318.357320

ref.
Siggraph: Particle Systems
Evans & Sutherland @http://www.es.com

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Karl Sims <Particle animation and rendering using data parallel computation>

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/97879.97923

ref.
Karl Sims home page
wikipedia: Karl Sims

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Alain Fournier (University of Toronto) & Don Fussell (The University of Texas at Austin) & Loren Carpenter (Lucasfilm) <Computer Rendering of Stochastic Models>

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/358523.358553

TGLTLSBFSSP: Models
wikipedia: Particle_system
Lucasfilm Ltd. @http://www.lucasfilm.com
GenArts @http://www.genarts.com