three body problem

I was introduced to the 3 Body Problem by Dr. Wade Hsu during USC’s SHINE Summer Research Program. I was in the middle of self-studying AP Physics, and gravitation seemed simple enough. All that really mattered was Newton’s Law of Gravitation, basic knowledge of kinematics and vectors, and it’s a done deal… right?

Nope!

To put it simply, the 3BP kinda broke my brain! I found it crazy that one could create a common example of literal mathematical chaos using the simple equations I learned in AP Physics 1.

Through Dr. Hsu’s presentation and some digging around the internet, I learned that one could find both chaotic and periodic solutions. Simply put, I found them beautiful.

To learn about this further (and also practice MatLab), I modeled some of these cases using Verlet’s approximation solution. I hope to showcase some more in the near future!

You can read about it in my repo here. Enjoy!