Open-Source Physics on Linux

Joey Bernard — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:09:27 +0000

My last several articles have covered lots of software for doing research in the sciences. But one important area I haven't covered in detail is the resources available for teaching the next generation of computational scientists. To fill this gap, you can use the code provided through the Open Source Physics project. This project is supported by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and it offers several different packages for doing simulations and analysis.

The first thing Open Source Physics provides is an entire suite of Java applications that do simulations of different physical systems. Because these simulations are all written in Java, they can be run on operating systems other than Linux. The categories covered include astronomy, electricity and magnetism, classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, optics and relativity. On the main Web site, you either can do a specific search or browse by topic to find simulations. The simulation programs are packaged as .jar files, so you can download them and run them simply by typing:


java -jar filename.jar

This lets you run the simulation on your desktop. But, because these are Java programs, you can put them a Web site and run them within a browser. This means you can include them on your science site and show visitors simulations of the systems you might be trying to explain.

Figure 1. For example, starting up the simulation of sliding down an inclined plane also pops up some introductory material.

Some of the simulations provided by Open Source Physics have parameters that you can alter to change the runtime details of the simulation. These parameters might be items like masses, velocities or field strengths. If the simulation you are using does have settable parameters, there will be an option to save the model details off to a data file. You can do this by clicking File→Save Model. The data file is an XML file, so it should be relatively clear if you want to edit the file directly with a text editor. You then can reload these parameters in the simulation by clicking File→Load Module. This way, you can share models you've developed with other people by sharing the XML data file.

Figure 2. Saving a Run for Sharing with Other People

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Open-Source Physics on Linux