Assignment #3: Binary Stars System by Abdelrahman Mallasi

Concept

The concept of this project is inspired by Binary Stars. Binary stars are a system of two stars in which one star revolves around the other or both revolve around a common center. The two mover objects in this simulation represent these binary stars that rotate around their center of mass. Upon running the program, users will observe two colorful, glowing mover objects (representing stars) moving around the canvas. These objects are attracted towards an invisible center (or the center of mass) and will continuously orbit around it. I’ve also added a drag force to see how it would affect the orbital movement. The color variations provide a visual representation of the vibrant nature of stars. For more information behind my inspiration, click here.

Highlight of Code

attract(mover) {
    let force = p5.Vector.sub(this.pos, mover.pos);
    let distanceSq = constrain(force.magSq(), 100, 1000);
    let G = 4;  // Gravitational constant for this simulation

// formula
    let strength = G * (this.mass * mover.mass) / distanceSq; 
    force.setMag(strength);
    mover.applyForce(force);
  }
}

The above code is the function of gravitational attraction under the Attractor class. I’m proud of it because it took a lot of experimentation to settle on the values of G and  the constrains for the distanceSq to provide the smoothest visuals.

Embedded Sketch

Link to Sketch

Reflections:

• Over a longer period, the movers behave unpredictably. They might suddenly accelerate and shoot off into the distance at high speeds or keep spinning ver close to the attractor.
• I set the drag coefficient to be the small value of 0.05. Larger values disturbed the orbital trajectories too much.
• I spent a large amount of time manipulating parameters such as the gravitational strength, distanceSq constraints, drag coefficient and such to provide a smooth visual. All these parameters got quite confusing and I arbitrarily changed the values until the program ran smoothly, rather than intentionally inputting specific values.
• Potential improvement: allowing users to interact by placing attractors or adjusting the properties of the stars.