I am doing a project for my class, and i decided i wanted to collide particles at near light speed, in an physics engine. I was wonder how should i go about this? Like, do I need to no all the factors like, velocity, no about gluons, quarks, and other subatomic things, and how they work? ALso i need to no how to go about that. Do i need to make it 3D or 2D and should I use circles in slow motion, but really have it "supposidly" going near light speed, to show the effects of it crashing into eachother.

I''d say do it in 2D for your class project. Obviously you have to do the animation in slow motion. Just make sure the paths that objects follow are correct, and maybe their relative speeds.

I''m certain that the interaction of particles varies quite a bit depending on whether the particle has mass or is massless (some particles have zero mass), whether the particle decays into subparticles, etc. You could make this simple or very complex. I say go for simple. Your program should only support particles with mass. Don''t support particle decay. Use a basic point-mass simulation, and use the Lorentz Force Law to find the force between two particles at any instance. For a simple simulation, you can ignore the gravitational force between particles and the weak force. The Lorentz equations only calculate the electromagnetic force. And since you''re not supporting a decaying particle, you can ignore the strong force----its just holding the particles of a single. Don''t worry about collisions either, at least at first. Just let the particle forces naturally cause the particle motion. I''m rambling a bit, because I don''t really know much about this subject.

(I did find one page of interest here

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html


Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

The problem with simulating particle-particle interactions at relativistic speeds is that once you make enough simplifications to visualise the system and move into a frame of reference suitable for simulation, then the particle interactions are going to look very much like billiard ball collisions. In other words, you could simulate a bunch of billiard balls colliding with each other and noone would know the difference!

The intersting aspects of subatomic particle interactions ARE when the particles emitted from the collision are different from the colliding particles. However, to simulate just what they do after the collision is no easy feat!

Regards,

Timkin

Thanks for all the help. Does anybody know of somewere in which i can find some equasions on how i can do this? Or a website where their is alot of research on this sorta topic.

I ma currently working on something along those lines. The only difference is that mine is just a simulator for particle systems (like marbles, billiard balls, etc.). I am making my own engine so if you have any equations related to collisions, please post them.