Celestia Forums

Does anyone know of a nice software package that lets a user "play" with the mass of objects (static or orbital) to see visually how the change in mass affects other bodies?

BAH !

rose-online

http://www.roseon.com avec Gravity

There's Gravity Simulator, although I haven't got much experience. I believe the interface needs some perseverence to master.

If you have access to Matlab, I can write one for you. I made a simple program with only two objects that worked fine, but I'd like to make a better one with more objects and a more accurate orbit solver

chaos syndrome wrote:There's Gravity Simulator, although I haven't got much experience. I believe the interface needs some perseverence to master.

I understand that the author's a nice guy who will help you set up your simulation if you e-mail him

The newer version may be a little easier to use than the previous one. It was released about a month ago.

I looked at Gravity Simulator thinking that it was obviously what I'm looking for. However, the little amount of information on their web site led me to believe that it's geared more to people who understand what gravity model they want to set up, and then send the computer off for a while to calculate a simulation and come back later for the answer.

I'm looking for something that could be used in a 1 hour class to help junior high school students gain a more intuitive "feel" for the effect mass has on gravity. I'm thinking of simple bouncing ball and planetary simulations that allow you to adjust the mass or velocity of an object. Perhaps to show two objects orbiting a barycenter and what happens to their orbits if you increase the mass of one of the objects.

There is a binary star orbit simulator available at
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/course ... ations.htm

Oooh. Thanks, Selden. That's close to what I'm looking for. I just need to be able to set up my own simulations. Cool web site!

Sky Pilot wrote:I looked at Gravity Simulator thinking that it was obviously what I'm looking for. However, the little amount of information on their web site led me to believe that it's geared more to people who understand what gravity model they want to set up, and then send the computer off for a while to calculate a simulation and come back later for the answer.

I'm looking for something that could be used in a 1 hour class to help junior high school students gain a more intuitive "feel" for the effect mass has on gravity. I'm thinking of simple bouncing ball and planetary simulations that allow you to adjust the mass or velocity of an object. Perhaps to show two objects orbiting a barycenter and what happens to their orbits if you increase the mass of one of the objects.

The "their website" = my website. I wrote Gravity Simulator. Except for the bouncing ball, it will do everything you asked. There's a barycenter simulation included with the program. It shows Earth / Moon, but if you want more wobble, you could make up your own system.

This only took me 2 minutes to throw together:
I started with the simulation onlyplanets.gsim (included), let the planets trace a full orbit, then used menu Objects>Edit Objects to change the mass of the Sun to 1.5 solar masses, and watched the chaos that ensued!

tony873004 wrote:The "their website" = my website. I wrote Gravity Simulator. Except for the bouncing ball, it will do everything you asked.

LoL!!! Am I BUSTED, or what?!

Honestly, I didn't get this from your web site's description of the product. I absolutely WILL take a closer look since the example you give is very much along the line of what I want. Thanks a million for clearing that up!!

It's got an autopilot feature, so if you want to give demonstrations like similar to a powerpoint, it makes it easy to create a simulation and let it run "hands-off".

If you send me an e-mail or post on my lonely forum board and tell me what kinds of things you'd like to denonstrate, I could help you set up your simulations. Admittedly, the documentation I provide is very lacking.

tony873004 wrote:The "their website" = my website. I wrote Gravity Simulator.

Noted, Tony. Iwill add your address in the next updates of the 'links' page of my Celestia Catalog. Thanks.Jeam