Could anyone help with the Stars example in Vpython
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Benjamin Anderson
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Aug 9, 2016, 3:57:25 AM8/9/16
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I'm trying to decipher what the programme is doing at each stage, i'm not that experienced with simulations so i would like some help with a step by step explanation, i realise this is more physics than Computing but if anyone is really good at this sort of thing their help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Bruce Sherwood
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Aug 9, 2016, 9:37:57 AM8/9/16
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Study the example program "BinaryStar-VPython", which contains the essence of "Stars-VPython", namely that one calculates the (vector) force that one star exerts on another, increments the momentum of each star by adding the vector impulse (F*dt), then increments the vector position of each star by adding the displacement (v*dt, where the velocity v is the momentum p divided by the mass).
There are two additional aspects of the stars program: the creation in a loop of all the sphere objects used to represent the stars, and the check for collisions (the criterion being that the center-to-center distance is less than the sum of the two stars' radii), with calculations to give the merged stars the sum of the momenta of the colliding stars.