| Schedule | LabAssignments |
Projectile Simulation
During the second week of class, the course covered systems, models, and simulations:
- Systems are things (real or abstract) that we're interest in.
- Models are a set of rules that govern a system.
- A simulation evolves a system according to a model.
LabSix and LabEight helped to introduce this concept, by solving the same problem, using two different models. The system was a particle moving near the surface of the earth. In LabSix, wind resistance was ignored, but it was added in LabEight. This was a lead in to the FinalProject, where particles move only under the force of gravity, but in three dimensions.
Rendering
The final step in LabEight was to use ParaView to render a series of scenes from the simulation, showing the position of the particles. The initial conditions (wind speed, particle masses and velocities, drag coefficients, etc.) were set up so that the lighter particles would be blown back by the wind, and land behind their initial positions.
You'll notice that the particles bounce a little as they reach the ground. That was an additional feature added for fun. Also, some of the movies have arrows in the scenes to represent the wind direction.
| Student | QuickTime .mov | MPEG-4 |
| Boris | Movie (3.3 MB) | Movie (196 KB) |
| Howard | Movie (1.9 MB) | Movie (126 KB) |
| Jon | Movie (4.5 MB) | Movie (265 KB) |
| Spencer | Movie (3.0 MB) | Movie (225 KB) |
