#Introduction This simulation is my basic attempt at an N-body simulation. There are no fancy algorithms to speed up the calculations, just a basic iterative simulation.

Introduction

I was introduced to an app on my phone that uses all of the sensors to record interesting physics data. On the train to work the other day I opened up the app to record data from the 3 axes of accelerometers. I’ve been studying integrals and the intuition that a summed acceleration curve equals the velocity finally hit me.

Determining an orbit from one radar observation was the chapter in Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bates, that I flipped to when I took the book off of my grandpa’s shelf. I flipped through the introduction to the section, and was fascinated about the Doppler effect. Being experienced only in High School introductory physics at the time, I only knew about the Doppler shift in the context of red/blue and the sound a F1 car made as it zoomed past. Seeing that we could determine an orbit of a satelite all the way out in space with just these basic data points fascinated me, and I sat down and worked my way through the rest of the book. It’s been about 3 years since then and I finally felt like I had the calculus and linear algebra skills to implement the projects in the back of the book. So over a weekend, I hacked on the code and algorithms to turn a radar observation into an orbit.

This is a series of the three men that have made physics and astronomy what they are today.