COS 226 Programming Assignment

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Hard Spheres

Simulate the motion of N colliding particles according to the laws of elastic collision using event-driven simulation. Such simulations are widely used in molecular dynamics (MD) to understand and predict properties of physical systems at the particle level. This includes the motion of molecules in a gas, the dynamics of chemical reactions, atomic diffusion, sphere packing, the stability of the rings around Saturn, the phase transitions of cerium and cesium, one-dimensional self-gravitating systems, and front propagation. The same techniques apply to other domains that involve physical modeling of particle systems including computer graphics, computer games, and robotics.

Hard sphere model. The hard sphere model (billiard ball model) is an idealized model of the motion of atoms or molecules in a container. In this assignment, we will focus on the two-dimensional version called the hard disc model. The salient properties of this model are listed below.

This simple model plays a central role in statistical mechanics, a field which relates macroscopic observables (e.g., temperature, pressure, diffusion constant) to microscopic dynamics (motion of individual atoms and molecules). Maxwell and Boltzmann used the model to derive the distribution of speeds of interacting molecules as a function of temperature; Einstein used it to explain the Brownian motion of pollen grains immersed in water.

Simulation. There are two natural approaches to simulating the system of particles.

Collision prediction. In this section we present the formulas that specify if and when a particle will collide with the boundary or with another particle, assuming all particles travel in straight-line trajectories.

Collision resolution. In this section we present the physical formulas that specify the behavior of a particle after an elastic collision with a reflecting boundary or with another particle. For simplicity, we ignore multi-particle collisions. There are three equations governing the elastic collision between a pair of hard discs: (i) conservation of linear momentum, (ii) conservation of kinetic energy, and (iii) upon collision, the normal force acts perpendicular to the surface at the collision point. Physics-ly inclined students are encouraged to derive the equations from first principles; the rest of you may keep reading.

Data format. Use the following data format. The first line contains the number of particles N. Each of the remaining N lines consists of 6 real numbers (position, velocity, mass, and radius) followed by three integers (red, green, and blue values of color). You may assume that all of the position coordinates are between 0 and 1, and the color values are between 0 and 255. Also, you may assume that none of the particles intersect each other or the walls.

N                            
rx ry vx vy mass radius r g b
rx ry vx vy mass radius r g b
rx ry vx vy mass radius r g b
rx ry vx vy mass radius r g b

Your task. Write a program MDSimulation.java that reads in a set of particles from standard input and animates their motion according to the laws of elastic collisions and event-driven simulation.



Perhaps everything below is just for the checklist??

Particle collision simulation in Java. There are a number of ways to design a particle collision simulation program using the physics formulas above. We will describe one such approach, but you are free to substitute your own ideas instead. Our approach involves the following data types: MinPQ, Particle, CollisionSystem, and Event.

Data sets. Some possibilities that we'll supply.

Things you could compute.

Cell method. Useful optimization: divide region into rectangular cells. Ensure that particles can only collide with particles in one of 9 adjacent cells in any time quantum. Reduces number of binary collision events that must be calculated. Downside: must monitor particles as they move from cell to cell.

Extra credit. Handle multi-particle collisions. Such collisions are important when simulating the break in a game of billiards.

This assignment was developed by Ben Tsou and Kevin Wayne.
Copyright © 2004.