What to do with GalaxSee once you have it installed on your computer!

GALAXSEE is a scientific modeling (simulation) with visualization tools that allows students to solve for the position and movement of masses under the influence of their mutual gravitational attraction. Many systems in the universe can be described as masses moving under the influence of their mutual gravitational attraction. Stars in a galaxy are one such system and that is why this modeling simulation is called GALAXSEE. Major planets and minor planets, asteroid and comets, moving around their central star like our solar system is another system that GALAXSEE can describe and allow students to be computational scientist. Galaxies interacting with one another in clusters of galaxies are another place in the universe that GALAXSEE describes. Because of the increased speed in computers and because of their increase in memory many personal computers now have the power that just a few years ago only research scientist at the most elite universities had access to. GALAXSEE is very close to a real cutting edge research tool. When used in an imaginative way it probably is capable of publishable science in peer reviewed journals. The interface to the simulator is sufficiently simple and the results of the calculation a visualization so clear that middle school and above students should be able to use it. First in guided activities and latter in real exploration to answer questions of their own devising.

Every object in GALAXSEE has a mass, a position (x-position, y-position, and z-position), and a velocity (V-x direction, V-y direction, and V-z direction). GALAXSEE uses Newtonian dynamics and the Newtonian universal law of gravity to evolve the particle masses positions and velocities in time. The masses are displayed moving in perspective as the positions and velocities of all the masses are updated.

The initial model may be created by using the program if it is a galaxy or by specifying the mass, a position (x-position, y-position, and z-position), and a velocity (V-x direction, V-y direction, and V-z direction) for each particle in a spread sheet program on an ordinary text editor like notepad.

Open the colliding-disk.gxy galaxies and run them for a few billion years (in simulated time not real time) and watch them collide send me and e-mail about the results. If you are sophistocated enclose the saved galaxy as an attachment and tell me how many billion years you ran the simulaton by what Show info say for time. You may need to increase the Star Size under View to see the red galaxies stars, I needed to do this to see the red galaxy's stars.

GalaxSEE is an experiment in education to see how to get regular Introductory Astronomy Students to use GalaxSEE.