Show individual forces for:     Mass 1 Mass 2 Mass 3 Mass 4

Worksheet for this simulation by Jim Kernohan of Milton Academy (July 7, 2024)

This is like the previous simulation, but it shows the time evolution of the system. The objects start out with random velocities, and you can get some interesting patterns. Note that the particles are draggable and that you can adjust their masses with the sliders.

Note that the simulation slows down by a factor of 10 when two particles get very close together. Even then, the physics may not be exactly right - it's hard to handle infinities well!

Simulation written by Andrew Duffy, and first posted on 5-11-2018.

Updated 7-16-2024 with a bit more control over the initial conditions.

Creative Commons License
This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

The counter has been running on this page since 8-10-2018. The number of people accessing the page since then is: