Skip to main content

NBody Objects

Getting Started

A. Goals

The purpose of this homework is to get an introduction to objects and object-oriented programming by reworking NBody from HW2. The specific goals are to:

This assignment will have the same end goal as HW2. You will implement a program that simulates the motion of bodies in the universe. Only now, you’ll do it using object oriented design. At the end of this assignment, you will have produced a visual simulation of the gravitational interactions among bodies in two dimensions. You will also write a number of tests that confirm the correctness of your code.

B. Background

A long time ago in an extraterrestrial body far, far away, you wrote a simulator for celestial physics (i.e. NBody for HW2). You were but a young Padawan, and wrote this with no methods and the entire thing in a single main function. Now, however, you have learned the ways of object-oriented programming and have picked up some sick skills. Skills such as the ability to write functions and now create objects! We will put these skills to use by revisiting our old friend NBody, and giving it an upgrade. We will also witness the benefits of having a modular program, and how we can use this to easily test our program.

C. Getting started

Here is a video explaining the Physics background for this assignment. This is the same video as in HW2, so if you need a refresher you can find it here.

You will be provided with four starting skeleton files, Body.java, BodyTest.java, Space.java, and SpaceTest.java. Add class header comments to each file. These are your starting files for the first two parts of the assignment. You can download the starter files here.

Create a Java class called NBodyObj.java with an empty main() function. Give your file a class header comment.

D. Advice

Work on the program in the order of the directions. Do not try to do things out of order, as that will likely add to any issues you encounter in the assignment. Much of this assignment is done in “reverse” order of HW2. You will start with physics and work backwards to the drawing and the loop in HW2.

Compile, run, and debug frequently; make one small change at a time, ensuring that your program works as you expect it to after each small change.

Test early and often in main methods. To ensure your code is properly written, you will want (and in fact need) to write your own tests.

Comment frequently and use good variable names as always.

E. A Disclaimer (and an Apology)

In lecture, we repeated dozens of times that instance variables should be private! And yet, when you look at the classes we’ve provided for you, you’ll see (GASP) public instance variables. Our goal is to help you learn how to write methods and use objects; good principles of class design will come later. For this assignment, you can skip using accessor/getter methods and just access the instance variables directly. Sorry!

1. Body.java & BodyTest.java

A. Purpose

In this section, you will fill the Body.java skeleton file with meaningful code. Additionally, you will also write several unit tests in BodyTest.java that help you verify the correctness of your methods in Body.java.

A body can represent a planet, star, or any other celestial body. Each body maintains its own mass (m), position (px, py) and velocity (vx, vy). Each body also stores its own image file (img). Use this information to figure out how to create the constructor.

In addition, a body has methods that can be called to perform various tasks, such as (calculating distance to another object, drawing the body on the canvas, etc.) By implementing these methods, you can recreate the behavior of your celestial bodies in NBody.java using object-oriented design.

The skeleton file Body.java contains an incomplete stub for every method, with the exception of toString(), which is entirely completed for you.

Some notes on the skeleton file:

B. Fields

The fields, or attributes, of each body object are provided for you in the skeleton. They are:

double m - mass of the body
double px - the x position of the body
double py - the y position of the body
double vx - the vx position of the body
double vy - the vy position of the body
String img - the filename of the image representing the body

These attributes maintain the “state” of the body. Later on in our program, we’ll talk about when we manipulate these attributes to simulate motion and gravity. However, for now, just view them as field variables similarly to field variables of other object examples we have covered in class.

Again, it’s important you don’t modify these variables. You will get a style warning (upon submission) saying to make these variables private. Leave these variables public, however, and ignore those style warnings. You will not lose points for these style warnings, but you will lose points if you make these variables private.

C. Constructor

The Constructor is the method that starts with:

public Body(double mass, double posX, double posY, double velX, double velY, String imageFile);

The constructor takes in (via the arguments above) the mass, starting position (posX and posY), starting velocity (velX and velY), and image filename of the body/planet. Within this constructor, you simply need to assign the arguments to the correct instance variables.

You must complete the constructor before moving on to any other methods. Look at the constructor examples from lecture. This will be very helpful to you here.

D. Implementing & Testing Methods

Provided Methods

toString

String toString();

This method has been completed for you. Do not change anything. This will be useful later for printing out the state of your bodies for the sake of testing in main and debugging.

Distance Methods

distanceToX

double distanceToX(Body other);

This method gets the distance between the body on which the method is called and the Body passed in as an argument (other) along the X-Axis, or $\Delta x$. Note – as in HW2 you should not be returning the absolute value of the distance. The distance could be negative. The distance should be the location of the other body - the location of the current body. For example, if we had two body variables, earth and sun, we could get the $\Delta x$ from the earth to the sun relative to $x$ by calling:

earth.distanceToX(sun);

See the diagram below for how to calculate this. Note that in the diagram below, the distance from the earth to the sun is positive (going to the right) and the distance from the sun to the earth is negative (going to the left).

distanceToY

double distanceToY(Body other);

Similarly to the previous method, this method gets the distance between the calling body and the Body passed in as an argument (other) along the Y-Axis, or $\Delta y$. See the diagram below. Again, this result can be negative. For example, the $\Delta y$ from the sun to the earth is negative, since it is downwards.

distanceTo

double distanceTo(Body other);

This gets the true distance ($d$ in the diagram below), between the bodies via a straight line. See the diagram below for how to calculate this. Remember, when squaring numbers, do not use Math.pow(), use simple multiplication. It is much faster.

🚨 Required Distance Tests 🚨

Throughout this assignment, there are a number of test cases you are required to write. They will help you check your work and get practice testing. These tests are not exhaustive, so you are also encourage to write your own tests at the end of the corresponding file. Note that you will have to manually calculate expected values for all of your tests.

The test stubs that we have provided to you all include a call to fail("Not Yet Implemented"). This guarantees that they fail before they’re implemented; when you write each test, replace these calls to fail() with your own assertions!

For these next three distance tests, consider two Body objects constructed like so:

Body sun = new Body(1, 3, 4, 0, 0, "sun.gif");
Body earth = new Body(1, 7, 7, 0, 0, "earth.gif");

Complete these three tests in BodyTest.java using these testing bodies. The first test is already completed for you, so you only need to fill in the second and third test. For each of these tests, and for any tests on double values later on, remember to use a DELTA value to account for the rounding errors in floating point numbers. We provide a DELTA constant for you to use in BodyTests.java.

  1. testDistanceToX: call sun.distanceToX(earth) and verify that it returns the correct value. (This test has been completed for you as a model.)
  2. testDistanceToY: call sun.distanceToY(earth) and verify that it returns the correct value.
  3. testDistanceTo: call sun.distanceTo(earth) and verify that it returns the correct value.


Force Methods

force

double force(Body other);

This function gets the gravitational force between the calling body and the argument body. The overall force is calculated by:

G * m1 * m2 / (d * d)

Where:

forceX

double forceX(Body other);

This function returns the x component of the force (F) between the calling body and the called body. This is calculated by: Fx = F * dx / d

Where:

forceY

double forceY(Body other);

This function returns the y component of the force (F) between the calling body and the called body. This is calculated by:

Fy = F * dy / d

Where:

🚨 Required Force Tests 🚨

For these next three force tests, consider two Body objects constructed like so:

Body mars = new Body(10, 2, 4, 0, 0, "mars.gif");
Body mercury = new Body(50, 7, 10, 0, 0, "mercury.gif");

Fill in these three tests in BodyTest.java using these testing bodies.

  1. testForce: call mars.force(mercury) and verify that it returns the correct value.
  2. testForceX: call mars.forceX(mercury) and verify that it returns the correct value.
  3. testForceY: call mars.forceY(mercury) and verify that it returns the correct value.

Draw

void draw()

This function draws the calling body by calling the appropriate PennDraw function with the necessary attributes of the body. This method should contain a single line of code.

Updating Positions and Velocities

Move

void move(double timeStep)

Update the position of the calling body. For the original values of position: (px, py) the resultant values should be (px + Δt vx, py + Δt vy). Δt, in this formula, represents timeStep. There should be NO LOOP inside this function.

getAffectedBy

void getAffectedBy(Body other, double timeStep)

This function updates the velocity of the calling body due to the gravitational pull of the argument, other (another body). This function should not alter the velocity of the other body. For the original values of velocity: (vx, vy) you will update the velocities to (vx + Δt ax, vy + Δt ay) for the body which is being affected.

The acceleration is calculated by the force of gravity between the bodies. Look back to HW2 to recall the steps required (and order) to update acceleration, and velocity.

Updating accelerations: ax can be calculated by fx / m where fx is the x component of the force between the two bodies. m is the mass of the calling body. You can calculate ay in a similar way. There should be NO LOOP inside this function.

Note that any updates made here ONLY concern two bodies, the calling body and the body passed in as an argument. There should be no loop in the function. This is different than in HW2. In HW2, you calculated the change in velocity on one body caused by every other body at the same time. Here, you will use this function repeatedly to calculate the change in velocity due to every other body one at a time. It may seem strange that we are only calculating the force between two bodies, not one body to every other body. However, ensuring all the bodies interact correctly will be handled in Space.java.

🚨 Required Movement Tests 🚨

For these next two movement tests, consider two Body objects constructed like so:

Body mars = new Body(1000, 2, 4, 0, 0, "mars.gif");
Body mercury = new Body(5000, 7, 10, -3, 4, "mercury.gif");

Fill in these two tests in BodyTest.java using these testing bodies.

  1. testMove: call mercury.move(10.0) and verify that mercury.px and mercury.py have the correct values afterwards. Note that you are not testing a returned value in this case.
  2. testGetAffectedBy: call mars.getAffectedBy(mercury, 100000.0) and verify that mars.vx, mars.vy, mercury.vx, and mercury.vy have the correct values. (Think: should mercury’s velocities change? To decide if they have, you’ll have to compare the values of these instance variables before and after calling the method.)

E. Checkpoint

Compile Body.java to ensure it compiles with no syntax errors.

F. Checkpoint

Submit your Body.java on Gradescope. There will be a series of individual function tests. Ensure that ALL of the online tests pass BEFORE moving on to Space.java. Note that you will get style warnings for the variables from the skeleton file. You can ignore these warnings below:

Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'px' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'py' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'vx' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'vy' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'm' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'img' must be private and have get/set methods.

All other style warnings must be corrected. The above style warning relates to visibility, which was discussed in class. However, for this assignment, do not make these variables private. You will not lose points for these checkstyle errors, but you will lose points if you make these variables private.

2. Space.java & SpaceTest.java

A. Purpose

Your Space.java file will act as the “body manager”. Any Space object you create will maintain an array of bodies, and provide means to simulate all the bodies’ movements en masse (that is, all at once rather than 1 at a time). Space also maintains the radius of the system we are simulating. Further, Space.java is responsible for drawing the starfield background and the planets in the starfield.

Begin by opening the skeleton file for Space.java.

B. Fields

The fields provided in the skeleton are:

These attributes maintain the “state” of the body. (Notice that we don’t have a variable for numBodies—can you think of how we’ll still be able to know this value anyway?) Later on in our program, we’ll talk about when we manipulate these variables to simulate motion and gravity. However, for now, just view them as instance variables similar to instance variables of other objects we have covered in class.

Again, it’s important you don’t modify these variable declarations. You will get a style warning saying to make these variables private. Leave these variables public, however, and ignore those style warnings. You will not lose points for these style warnings, but you will lose points if you make these variables private.

C. Constructor

The constructor takes in a universe file (a text file containing all the relevant information of the universe we’re simulating). It uses this file to set the value radius variable (one of the fields in our Space class), as well as to initialize and populate the bodies array. You will be provided with a text file of the following format. (Note the last row of text as well as the words numBodies and radius are not in the file, we have it here just to annotate the file.)

5        numBodies
2.50e+11 radius
5.97400e+24  1.49600e+11  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  2.98000e+04    earth.gif
6.41900e+23  2.27900e+11  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  2.41000e+04     mars.gif
3.30200e+23  5.79000e+10  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  4.79000e+04  mercury.gif
1.98900e+30  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00      sun.gif
4.86900e+24  1.08200e+11  0.00000e+00  0.00000e+00  3.50000e+04    venus.gif
m            px           py           vx           vy             img

In this file,

There will be numBodies rows of text remaining in the file, each containing six values:

Remember, unlike in HW2, you will not be storing these values into arrays. Rather, you should use all of the data in each row of the file to instantiate one Body object and then store that object into the bodies array.

Start by opening the file the same as you did in HW2 by creating an In variable to read a file. If you forgot how to do this, you can look at the Reading From a File portion of HW2.

From there, you will process the file similarly to HW2. However, instead of storing the data in arrays, like you did in HW2, you will store the data in objects. First, read numBodies. Once you know how many bodies there are, you can create your Body array variable. Your Body array should have size numBodies, so initialize that array now. After that, you can set the Space radius variable. Immediately after setting this variable, you can go ahead and call:

PennDraw.setXscale(-radius, radius);
PennDraw.setYscale(-radius, radius);

Finally, iterate through the next numBodies lines for the input file. For each line, you should create an instance of the Body class using the fields you read in from the universe file and store that instance in the bodies array.

🚨 Required Constructor Tests 🚨

For these next two tests, consider a Space object constructed like so:

Space s = new Space("binary.txt");

"binary.txt" is the name of a file containing solar system data for a toy universe that we’ve provided for you. Fill in these two tests in SpaceTest.java using this universe.

  1. testSpaceConstructorFields: verify that your constructor initializes your fields properly by checking the length of the bodies array and the radius of the universe.
  2. testSpaceConstructorBodies: “spot check” that you read the bodies properly by testing that bodies[0].px and bodies[1].vy have the correct values as listed in “binary.txt”

Notice that we have not provided a value for DELTA in SpaceTest.java, so you will need to provide your own. When testing velocities, we recommend using a DELTA of 0.01. For testing positions, a DELTA of 1e6 is appropriate.

D. Methods

toString

String toString()

Once again, this method is given too you, do not change it. The output of this method should match the print statement in HW2.

simulate

void simulate(double timeStep)

In this method, you will simulate the physics of the bodies for a duration of timeStep. You can think of this as similar to the contents of one iteration of your time loop in HW2. In this method, you must first update the velocities of all the bodies. After ALL of the bodies velocities are updated, you must update the positions of the bodies. If you are finding your results are slightly off, you may have the update velocities and update positions either out of order or staggered.

Note that this method has no time loop, that will be handled in the final class you write for this assignment. So you should have no loop that is over a duration of time. You will, however, have multiple loops over the bodies arrays.

Updating Velocities

To update the velocities, you will use the getAffectedBy() method on each body multiple times. Say for example we were simulating three body variables: earth, sun, and moon. You would need to call:

earth.getAffectedBy(sun, timeStep);    earth.getAffectedBy(moon, timeStep);
sun.getAffectedBy(earth, timeStep);    sun.getAffectedBy(moon, timeStep);
moon.getAffectedBy(sun, timeStep);    moon.getAffectedBy(earth, timeStep);

Note that in this class, you don’t have body variables. Rather, you have a array storing Body objects. You must have each body affect every other body. However, you do not want a body to affect itself (i.e., the earth’s gravity has no effect on the earth itself).

Updating Positions

After updating velocities, you should update all body positions. This can be done by simply calling the move() method on each body instance.

🚨 Required Simulate Test 🚨

Consider a Space object constructed and manipulated like so:

Space s = new Space("solarSystem.txt");
s.simulate(25000.0);

Fill in this last test in SpaceTest.java using this universe.

  1. testSpaceSimulate25000SecondsEarth: partially verify the correctness of your simulate function by checking that the position and velocity variables (in both x and y dimensions) for Earth in your simulation are correct. Refer to the following correct numbers for running the simulation for one time step of 25000 seconds.
5
2.50e+11
5.97400e+24  1.49596e+11  7.45000e+08 -1.48201e+02  2.98000e+04    earth.gif
6.41900e+23  2.27898e+11  6.02500e+08 -6.38597e+01  2.41000e+04     mars.gif
3.30200e+23  5.78753e+10  1.19750e+09 -9.89331e+02  4.79000e+04  mercury.gif
1.98900e+30  3.30867e+01  0.00000e+00  1.32347e-03  0.00000e+00      sun.gif
4.86900e+24  1.08193e+11  8.75000e+08 -2.83294e+02  3.50000e+04    venus.gif

draw

void draw()

First, this method should draw the starfield.jpg at the center of the screen. Similar to HW2, this can be accomplished by PennDraw.picture(0.0, 0.0, "starfield.jpg"). After drawing the starfield, this method will draw each body. This should be done by calling every individual body’s draw method.

E. Checkpoint

At this point, you can submit both Body.java and Space.java to Gradescope. You should ensure all tests are passing.

To test drawing, add a main() function to Space.java and add the following two lines of code to it.

Space s = new Space("solarSystem.txt");
s.draw();

This should produce the following drawing:

If your drawing does not look like this, try to debug your draw() functions. Consider:

3. NBodyObj.java

A. Purpose

This is the “main” class that executes NBody. This is the file you will run to utilize the Space and Body classes to simulate a gravity. this program will take in command line arguments, create the Space object, and then execute the time loop to simulate the movement of the bodies. This will also be by far your smallest class in this program.

You were not given a skeleton for this program. However, you will only need one function, and that is your standard main function. All your code should be in main.

Command Line Arguments

These command line arguments are the same as HW2.

Utilize these arguments the same way as in HW2. For a command line below should simulate our inner solar system for the duration of one year, run your program with:

java NBodyObj 31557600.0 25000.0 solarSystem.txt

B. Creating the Space Object

You simply need to create an instance of the Space class using the input filename. This should be done after you process the Command Line Arguments, but before the Time Loop.

C. Time Loop

Similar to HW2, you should have a loop to iterate over the duration of the simulation, starting at elapsedTime = 0 and looping until elapsedTime is no longer less than simulationTime. You should increment elapsedTime by timeStep every time.

Do not forget to use PennDraw.enableAnimation(), PennDraw.advance(), and PennDraw.disableAnimation() in the appropriate places.

Within the body of the time loop, you should simply call the simulate() and draw() methods on your Space object. Because Space class handles all of the physics simulation, it keeps this loop very simple and short. After your time loop finishes (that is, after the closing bracket of the loop), for testing purposes, write the following line of code:

System.out.println(nameOfYourSpaceVariable);

Replace nameOfYourSpaceVariable with the variable name you got from “Creating the Space Object”.

This will cause the Space object’s toString() function to be called. This will print the universe’s parameters, including all the details about the bodies, AFTER your simulation finishes. This will be useful for comparing the output of your NBodyObj with the expected output in the submission report.

A. Readme

Complete readme_nbody2.txt in the same way that you have done for previous assignments.

B. Submission

Submit Body.java, BodyTest.java, Space.java, SpaceTest.java, NBodyObj.java, and readme_nbody2.txt on Gradescope.

Before submission remove any print statements that were used for debugging or testing your functions. The only print statement that shouldn’t be removed is the final print statement in NBodyObj.java.

Be sure that each class had an appropriate header comment (as in previous assignments). Also ensure that every method has an appropriate header comment, and that your code is well-documented.

If the autograder times out when you submit, you likely have an infinite loop somewhere. You might have <= in place of <, or incorrect incrementing conditions. Check your loops and make sure you test it yourself.

As noted in several places, you will get some style warnings here. You can ignore the following style warnings:

Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'px' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'py' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'vx' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'vy' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'm' must be private and have get/set methods.
Body.java:X:XX: Variable 'img' must be private and have get/set methods.
Space.java:X:XX: Variable 'bodies' must be private and have get/set methods.
Space.java:X:XX: Variable 'radius' must be private and have get/set methods.
BodyTest.java:X: Using a static member import should be avoided - org.junit.Assert.*.
SpaceTest.java:X: Using a static member import should be avoided - org.junit.Assert.*.

These style warnings relate to visibility and imports, which will be discussed in class in the coming week. However, as noted in the skeleton, do not edit these variables. Simply leave them as is. However, you must fix all other style warnings.