Two Body Gravitation

A prior exercise set was developed as part of the PICUP curriculum by Walter Freeman and Kelly Roos which required students to build a computational model of a gravitational 2-Body system consisting of a traveling mass moving around gravitationally binding larger stationary mass. The problem set also has students attempt two numerical approaches utilizing the simple Euler and the Euler-Cromer to evaluate the accuracy and stability of these approximation methods. My work consisted of creating an implementation of this exercise set utilizing glowscipt (VPython). Below are some charts created utilizing this glowscipt implementation when creating a model of the moon’s orbit trajectory around earth utilizing the Euler-Cromer approximation method.

Advisor: Dr Marie Lopez del Puerto

• W. Eagan and M. Lopez del Puerto, “Glowscript implementation of completed code” for Kelly Roos, “2-Body Gravitation” Published in the PICUP Collection, June 2019. Implementation published June 2021

Link to PICUP: https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/exercises/exercise.cfm?I=422&A=2bgrav