written by Wolfgang Christian, Harvey Gould, and Jan Tobochnik

The classical-physics model of helium is a simple example of a three body problem and is similar to gravitational problem of a heavy sun and two light planets.  It consists of two electrons moving in a 2/r potential well and interacting through a 1/r potential.  Initial conditions can be set to show phenomena such as  autoionization or braided orbits.  These conditions are stored in an xml document.

• Download mech_helium.jar - 571kb Java Archive File

Last Modified May 21, 2008