written by Wolfgang Christian

The Rocket Car JavaScript Model explores the dynamics of a car of mass M = 10 powered by a pulsed rocket engine that emits N discrete pulses each having a mass m. The exhaust velocity, the number of pulses, and the pulse mass can be changed before running the simulation.  Observe how the speed of the car increases as each burst is emitted.  The mass of the empty rocker car is fixed at 10.  Mass units are arbitrary and could be ounces for a toy rocket and tons for a commercial rocket.   The exhaust speed is fixed at 1.  Velocity units are again arbitrary and could be kilometers/sec for a chemical rocket or thousands of kilometers/sec for ion propulsion.  The physics does not depend on the units and the speed shown will have the same units as the exhaust speed.

The Rocket Car JavaScript Model is designed for classroom demonstration and student experimentation. It was developed using the Easy JavaScript Simulations (EjS) version 5.3 and is distributed as a
ready-to-run html page and requires only a browser with JavaScript support. This model runs on all platforms, including mobile devices.

• Download ejss_model_RocketCar.zip - 324kb Compressed File

Last Modified December 11, 2019

This file has previous versions.

This source code zip archive contains an XML representation of the Rocket Car JS Model.   Unzip this archive in your Ejs workspace to compile and run this model using EJS 5 or above.  Although EJS is a Java program, EJS will create a stand alone JavaScript program that can run on all devices from this source code.

• Download ejss_src_RocketCar.zip - 16kb Compressed File

Last Modified December 11, 2019