Congratulations to Flynn from Heckmondwike Grammar School who won the Highly Commended Award for the Aged 15 category. Flynn’s entry uncovers the mystery of how phenomena, like moons, and binary planet systems, move around their parent body through space. Read his cover letter below:
I believe that one of the biggest mysteries that physics has ever solved in history was the mystery of the planets and how celestial bodies move through space. This is why one of the first ideas I had for my entrance to the challenge was to create a physically accurate orbit simulator. My project, Kinetic Kaleidoscope, uncovers the mystery of how phenomena, like moons, and binary planet systems, move around their parent body through space, and how initial velocity, position, and mass all help to shape the future of the system. It is an n-body simulation, using Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation to calculate the acceleration and velocity of the planets, even including a preview path to predict how the system will evolve as it runs. There are 2 differences to reality: the value I’ve used for the gravitational constant (G) is 100, as this makes the simulation much more interesting to view; and at the centre of every planet there appears to be a singularity, due to the program trying to divide by zero. But these are the only inaccuracies. The project including code in its entirety and a playable demo can be found at my GitHub: https://github.com/flymo5678/kineticKaleidoscope