Gravity Simulator

Project Description

This is an application that I designed to simulate the forces of gravity on multiple masses. You can add stationary masses and moving masses and when they collide, their mass and momentums combine. You can also turn on a slope field that shows the direction of the net force at each point.

Development

To make this project, I used many algorithms that I was currently learning in high school physics. This helped me create realistic motion. Each frame I just add up all of the forces on each moving mass and use that number to determine how much to change their velocities.

There were many bugs that alluded me for a long time. Some integer to float errors I didn't catch until over a year after "finishing" the project when I started getting into the details of Java for my Oracle certification. The sines and cosines involved in converting between the angles, magnitudes, and components of vectors caused some of the errors due to the fact that inverse sines, cosines, and tangents have limited ranges. Most of them have been patched but if you find any more, please let me know.

This is one of my most advanced Java projects. I applied both physics and coding knowledge in order to make a 2d physics simulation. I found when working on this project that I really enjoy physics based coding. I feel as though I am making a model of the real world with programming. I have more more ideas for simulations and aids that I hope to implement in the future. If you are interested, I made a Desmos graph that graphically represents momentum and energy in various types of collisions. Similar to my gravity simulator, it helped me gain a more intimate understanding of collisions and how to solve them.

Download

If you would like to try this out for yourself, here is a zip folder. Just extract it and run the jar file inside using java 11.