twobodyproblem 1.3.0

a little simulation for the gravitational two body problem

Two Body Problem

a small simulation

Welcome!

I wrote a small program in Python to simulate the two body problem. You can either choose from presets (like Sun, Earth, Moon etc.) or type in your own masses and volumes. The program will show you a visualization of the simulation.

Table of Contents

Installation Instructions

• via PyPi
• via GitHub

Usage

Installation Instructions

via PyPi

The Python package manager pip will install the last uploaded version from the Python Package Index PyPi. This will not always be the latest version, so if you want to install all the latest features, install it from git (see below).

1. Make sure Python and pip are installed correctly.
2. Run pip3 install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel twobodyproblem from a command line.
3. Now, the program is runnable with python -m twobodyproblem or python3 -m twobodyproblem.

(You may need Microsoft Visual C++ to be able to run the program, so install it from here if needed.)

via GitHub

1. Make sure Python and pip are installed correctly.
2. Make sure Git SCM is installed correctly.
3. Run these commands from a command line:
   1. mkdir TwoBody and cd TwoBody
   2. git clone https://github.com/Two-Body-Problem/twobodyproblem-simulation-python.git
   3. pip3 install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
   4. pip3 install twobodyproblem-simulation-python
4. Now, the program is runnable with python -m twobodyproblem or python3 -m twobodyproblem.

(You may need Microsoft Visual C++ to be able to run the program, so install it from here if needed.)

Usage

To learn more about how to run the program with different options, run python -m twbodyproblem -h or python3 -m twbodyproblem -h respectively.

The program (better: the input section) can be run either with a graphical user interface (GUI) or with a command line interface (CLI).

No matter if you run the program in GUI or CLI mode, you will have to input options and values. The options define the particular behavior of the simulation, the values define the dimensions (i.e. mass, radius, distance, velocity) of the bodies.

Saving options and values is currently only supported in GUI mode. To save values, press Ctrl+S. The values will then be saved into a file. If you do this action repeatedly, the former contents of the file (i.e. the saved values) will be overwritten! To load saved values from this file, press Ctrl+L. To save or load values through a file dialog, press Ctrl+Shift+S or Ctrl+Shift+L. It works the same way for saving and loading settings from the settings window (open it with Ctrl+I). These files will be saved in the YAML format (*.yml).

In GUI mode, you can select from a few presets (e.g. Sun, Moon, Earth) to fill in some values. To do so, press Ctrl+E, select from the drop-down menu and press one of the two buttons in the lower right corner.

In CLI mode, the simulation will start automatically after the last input. To start the simulation from GUI mode, press the button in the lower right corner.

During the simulation, you are able to pause, un-pause and stop the simulation with the accordingly named buttons below the black rectangle. The restart button restarts the whole program, not just the simulation.

The sliders below the buttons can be used to magnify the bodies in the simulation. This magnification does not affect the physics, it is only a visual help.

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Participation in this README is always welcome!