FallLab

A simple Python code to simulate and analyze free fall kinematics and dynamics.

Features:

• Height vs time
• Potential energy (PE) vs time
• Kinetic energy (KE) vs time
• Velocity vs time
• KE/PE vs time
• KE vs height
• PE vs height

1.1 Installation

Requirements:

• Numpy
• Matplotlib

To install FallLab, run the following command in your terminal:

> git clone https://github.com/Kushaalkumar-pothula/FallLab.git

1.2 Usage

To run the simulation, you will have to run main.py with some parameters.

> python main.py [t] [h] [m] [g]

Where:

• t: The time for which the simulation is to be run, in seconds. Required.
• h: Height of the body above the surface, in meters. Required.
• m: Mass of the smaller body, in kilograms. Required.
• -g or --acceleration: Acceleration due to gravity in m/s^2. Optional, default value is 9.81 m/s^2.

The parameters can be displayed by using -h or --help:

$ python main.py -h
usage: main.py [-h] [-g] t h m

positional arguments:
  t                     Time for which the simulation is ran, in seconds.
  h                     Height of the body from the surface, in meters.
  m                     Mass of the body, in kilograms.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -g, --acceleration    Acceleration due to gravity