There are particles in a chamber. Particles are given random velocities in the x and y directions. Each particle has a mass, given manually to that of an existing atom. If the particle comes into contact with the wall, it bounces off of it. When a particle comes into contact with another particle, they bounce off of each other according to the elastic collision equation. The kinetic energy of the system stays the same throughout the simulation and the temperature is calculated off of that energy.
What were the questions you planned for your model to help answer?We asked questions about the relationship between temperature and kinetic energy and how one affects the other.
What were your hypotheses about the answers to the questions when you started? What results and behaviors did you observe from using your model?We were expecting to observe many collisions and interactions between the particles. We expected that the energy and temperature stay constant if we didn't change the speed of particles.
Did your observations match your expectations? If not, why do you think they did not? What did this teach you about the topic you were modeling?Our observations generally matched our expectations, but the proposed calculations may not have been accurate enough in a real world sense.
Did the results support your initial hypotheses? If not, what were your new hypotheses?Our results mostly matched our hypothesis, however the numbers we collected were different than our expectation. This is most likely due to a mismatch in order of maginitude and lack of account for latent heat.
What changes did you have to make to your plans and your models to make your models more accurate and/or realistic?We added some real world figures like the mass of an atom of water and the specific heat. This helps with the energy to temperature calculation.
What did you learn from working on this project?We learned that programming is the easy part of modeling, typos are common, research is important to understanding the purpose of creating a model.