written by Wolfgang Christian, Mario Belloni, and Anne Cox
educational validator: Bethany Zach

The GR Schwarzschild Light Impact Parameter program simulates the path of light around a black hole using the Schwarzschild metric and allows the user to set the impact parameter of the light.  It also displays a plot of the effective potential well in which the light particle resides. The default setting is light with an r-coordinate value of 3.5 and an impact parameter of 5.346.  

GR Schwarzschild Light Impact Parameter is part of a suite of Open Source Physics programs that model aspects of General Relativity.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b.jar file will run the program if Java is installed. Other programs provide additional visualizations.  They can be found by searching ComPADRE for Open Source Physics, OSP, or General Relativity.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b.jar - 620kb Java Archive File

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

This file has previous versions.

A pdf document that briefly describes the GR Schwarzschild Light Impact Parameter program. It describes how to use the gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b.jar file and contains short tutorial exercises for use with the gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b.jar file.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b.pdf - 91kb Adobe PDF Document

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

The materials distributed in this zip file are in support of the GR Schwarzschild Impact Parameter program. This distribution contains the GR Schwarzschild Light Impact Parameter program, documentation and exercises.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_impact_b_distribution.zip - 631kb Compressed File

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

This file has previous versions.