A primer to numerical simulations: The perihelion motion of Mercury
ORAL
Abstract
Numerical simulations play an increasingly important role in modern science. In this work, we suggest using a numerical study of the famous perihelion motion of the planet Mercury (one of the prime observables supporting Einsteins General Relativity) as a test case to teach numerical simulations to high school students. The project was presented as a one day course at a student summer school. This work includes details about the development of the code (Python) for which no prior programming experience is needed, a discussion of the visualization as well as the course teaching experience. This course encourages students to develop an intuition for numerical simulations, motivates students to explore problems themselves and to critically analyze results.
*This work is supported in part by NSFC and DFG through funds provided to the Sino – German CRC110 “Symmetries and the Emergence of Structure in QCD”. C.K. gratefully acknowledges funding through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship.
–
Presenters
-
Christopher Koerber
- University of California, Berkeley, Forschungszentrum Juelich