Question:
I am a Physics teacher in Albuquerque New Mexico and one of two
sponsors of supercomputing contest teams here. We have
a team whose project is doing a simulation of Hermes collision
with the earth. They are now attempting to see if they can
simulate diverting such a collision with the explosion of
an atomic device. Their program involves differential
s equations with two dimensional variable variables I for
velocity and acceleration. Is it a reasonable first approximation
to translate the energy yield of such a bomb into kinetic energy
and the fractions of this energy in the direction x and y into
the velocities at the time of the explosion into velocity components?
The fraction determined by integration over a solid angle.
Replies:
Yes, that sounds like a reasonable approximation. You might
attempt to get into a more detailed picture of the explosion
(quantity of mass in the bomb, what exactly it does to the
asteroid - for example splitting it into several pieces is
an option perhaps) to be sure you are doing something reasonable.
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.
