AstroGrav Help /Sample Simulations /Abstract Systems /Newton's CradleVersion 5.1

Newton's Cradle

This simulation shows an astronomical version of the well-known Newton's cradle toy. There are five balls arranged in a straight line, which move under their mutual gravitational attraction.

You can run the simulation to see what happens, and change the initial positions of the balls to reproduce the behaviour of a real Newton's cradle. Unlike a real Newton's cradle, the masses of individual balls can also be edited to see how this affects behavior, and additional balls can be added if desired. The coefficient of restitution can also be changed to increase or decrease the size of the bounces. Since different computers run at different speeds, you may need to edit the evolution time step to get the simulation to run at an acceptable rate.