Friction-based sorting

Authors:
Laura Dioşan;Mihai Oltean
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania;Department of Computer Science Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Venue:
Natural Computing: an international journal
Year:
2011

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Abstract

Since computer processing mainly depends on sorting and searching methods, a key problem is how to design efficient algorithms in order to solve such problems. This paper describes a new nature-inspired mechanism (called Friction-based Sorting) capable of sorting a given set of numbers. The main idea behind this mechanism is to associate a ball (whose weight is proportional to the considered number) to each number. All the balls being allowed to fall in the presence of friction, the heaviest ball (which corresponds to the greatest input number) will reach the ground first and the lightest ball (associated with the smallest number) will reach the ground last. The proposed mechanism is analyzed, together with its strengths and weaknesses.