Over Engineer

Modeling the mundane with disproportionate rigor.

12 projects. 12 months. 2026.

Each month, one everyday phenomenon — a traffic jam, a penalty kick, a raindrop on a window — modeled with the same mathematical rigor as a defense system. Not because it matters. Because the ability to formalize the everyday is what engineering is.

The series

#	Month	Phenomenon	Math	Key result
01	Jan	The Optimal Shower	Newton's Law of Cooling x Fanger PMV x Pareto	Optimal: 34.0C
02	Feb	Phantom Traffic Jams	LWR continuum + Bando OVM stability	rho_crit = 30 veh/km
03	Mar	The Penalty Kick Game	Zero-sum game theory + Nash via LP	Goal rate: 75%
04	Apr	Elevator Dispatching	M/M/c queueing + SCAN/LOOK	LOOK 48% faster
05	May	The Queue Paradox	M/M/1 + Little's Law + serpentine	Variance -67%
06	Jun	Raindrop Racing	Stokes drag + coalescence	r* = 1.5mm
07	Jul	The Blind Bartender	1-D Kalman filter + sensor fusion	RMSE 0.104m
08	Aug	Flocking Dynamics	Reynolds boids (1987) + Vicsek psi	psi: 0.03->0.94
09	Sep	The Optimal Paper Airplane	Aerodynamics + L/D optimization	L/D = 3.1:1
10	Oct	The Self-Balancing Tray	Slosh dynamics + LQR control	Peak 18->4 deg
11	Nov	The Strength of Cardboard	FEA + Euler buckling	278,000x stiffer
12	Dec	Sorting Algorithms as Music	Sonification + spectral entropy	Quick: 0.79 entropy

Structure

over-engineer/
├── README.md                    # This file
├── projects/
│   ├── shower/                  # P.01
│   │   ├── model.py
│   │   ├── tests/
│   │   └── README.md
│   ├── traffic/                 # P.02
│   ├── penalty/                 # P.03
│   ├── ...
│   └── sorting-music/           # P.12
└── site/                   # Live site

Each project folder contains:

• model.py — the mathematical implementation
• tests/ — pytest suite verifying mathematical invariants
• README.md — the question, the model, the result, the limitations
• data/results.json — numerical output

Run all projects

for d in projects/*/; do
  cd "$d"
  python3 model.py
  python3 -m pytest tests/ -q
  cd ..
done

Stats

• 90 tests passing across 12 projects (0 failures)
• Python + NumPy + SciPy — no external simulation libraries
• MIT License — open source, reproducible

Philosophy

The model says 34C. The human says 40C. The gap is the point.

The world is formalizable. This repo proves it, one mundane phenomenon at a time.

---

Amine Harch El Korane - 2026