Overview

As an example of a computational exercise that you might do in an introductory course, and to illustrate a few approaches to computation that you might use with students, we’d like to show you a short exercise with orbital mechanics and Keplerian orbits.

Learning Goals:

  • Reflect on how computation can “unlock” a greater variety of topics, systems, and physics in intro courses
  • Consider the “minimally working code” approach: what do you write for your students, and what do they write themselves?
  • Make a numerical model of planetary orbits in Glowscript/Trinket
  • Reflect on what sort of physics students might learn from it

Newtonian gravity and Keplerian orbits in intro courses

Part 1: Reflection (5 minutes)

Discuss the following with your groups:

  • What do you teach your students about Newtonian gravity in intro courses?
  • What do you teach your students about orbital dynamics in intro courses?
  • Is there more to the story that you’d like them to learn about orbital dynamics? Why don’t you cover everything you’d like?

Part 2: Creating the model (30 minutes)

Here is a “minimally working code” in Trinket, a browser-based VPython interpreter.

You can use the “fullscreen” button here to maximize this. Complete the missing pieces to make a complete orbit simulator. Modify the code and add features as you want!

If you have questions about how to do things or need help debugging, ask us – or ask your favorite large language model!

Part 3: Integration into your courses (15 minutes)

Discuss the following with your groups:

  • What do you think about the “minimally working code” approach? Would you add things to this skeleton? Would you take things away?
  • What purpose could this exercise serve in your intro courses? What would students learn from it?
  • How could it be modified or extended to connect to more physics ideas (beyond “make the orbit go”?)
  • How is this different than what you’d teach using just pencil and paper?

If you’d like some inspiration, here’s a version I made with more features. Might it be useful to just provide this version or something like it to students directly?

Part 4: Group discussion