Collision Explorer

Live Script exploring and visualizing collisions of polygonal planar rigid bodies.

This Live Script explores the collisions of 2-dimensional polygonal rigid bodies. The exchange of linear and angular momentum follows an impact mechanics model with allowance for inelasticity. The code tracks and visualizes the center of-mass motion and rotational states before and after a single collision of a vertex with a face. The objects are n-sided polygons but other polygonal shapes could be explored and the code extended to handle vertex-vertex and face-face collisions. Built-in and custom functions related to polygons are used. In particular, the built-in intersect function is exploited for collision detection.

This Live Script may interest students and instructors in physics, engineering, animation, and other STEM fields. 'Try this' suggestions, coding 'Challenges', and references are included for further exploration.