This week I really enjoyed using matter.js. Working with object and not have to worry about the physics felt intuitive. I made two seperate sketches to show.
Dominos
I’ve always loved watching Rube Goldberg machine videos and I aimed at making a very simplistic version for this project using what we learnt in class.
My aim was to continuously transfer the kinetic energy from the initial pendulum swing to the row of dominos. This is just the start, which I hopefully will build on to create a more complex system. I gained greater understanding of the matter.js through this.
Challenges
A lot of trial and error was required to get all objects moving like intended, especially since they don’t start off with the physical properties I envisioned.
Newton’s Cradle
For this sketch I set out to create a Newton’s cradle using matter.js. While I am content with the result, I realize that it isn’t very realistic. The motion in my sketch is slightly off. I initially thought just placing the pendulums side by side would be enough to simulate this phenomena but I later learnt that I had to tweak its physical properties quite a lot to get the right motion. This makes sense in hindsight since we can’t just make Newton cradles out of any material in real life.