Object-Oriented Space Physics: Part 1

In this assignment we'll simulate the law of gravity to illustrate the motions of the sun and the planets of inner solar system: Mercury (cyan), Venus (green), Earth (blue), and Mars (red), as well as a comet based on Comet Encke (magenta), which has an orbit of 3.3 earth years.

I have already started the program, as linked below; your job is to complete its Body class, which will incorporate the code computing how gravity affects each body of the system.

The Body class should incorporate the following constructor and methods. (You'll notice I've also included a toString method, but it's just in case you want it for debugging. You don't need to use it.)

Body(double inMass, String inName, double inVx, double inVy)

(Constructor) Constructs a body with the given mass and name. Its initial velocity in the horizontal direction is inVx pixels per frame, and its initial velocity in the vertical direction is inVy pixels per frame.

double getMass()

Returns the mass of this body.

void updateDirection(SolarSystem system)

Updates the velocity of this body based on the bodies within win. The physics of how the body is affected are described below.

Note that this method does not alter the velocity of other bodies in the window. The window will invoke updateDirection for every body, and each invocation will update the velocity only for that body.

void step()

Moves the body one step according to its current direction.

Suggestion: I recommend starting by writing all the methods but updateDirection, and just leaving updateDirection blank. Thus, you wouldn't need to worry at first about the mathematics listed below. There would be no gravity, and so all the bodies would move in straight lines. Only after you see this much working would you start on updateDirection.

Gravity exerts a force between each pair of bodies. Suppose we have two bodies, one of mass m₀ at (x₀, y₀), and another of mass m₁ at (x₁, y₁). We can determine the distance and angle between them as diagrammed below.

I recommend using the Math class's atan2 method to compute θ. It takes two parameters, the first being the numerator of the above fraction, y₁ − y₀, and the second being the denominator, x₁ − x₀. It returns the angle in radians.

Of course, m₀ will have some current velocity, moving v_x pixels in the x-direction with each time frame and v_y pixels in the y-direction. But gravity will lead this mass m₀ to be pulled toward m₁; the law of gravity says that it will be pulled with a force of:

The gravitational constant G used in the above formula is 6.67 × 10⁻³⁰. (The actual gravitational constant is 6.67 × 10⁻¹¹ m³ / kg s²; but in our program each pixel represents 10⁹ meters, and each frame represents 10⁴ seconds; after converting the units to pixels and frames, we arrive at the exponent of −30.)

The force thus computed will lead v_x to increase by F cos θ and v_y to increase by F sin θ.

Of course, there are several bodies in the solar system. The same body m₀ will be pulled by all other bodies; thus, to update the velocity of a body, you would go through all other bodies, compute the force pulling it toward that body, and update its velocity accordingly.