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

The GR Schwarzschild Light Launch Angle program simulates the path of light around a black hole using the Schwarzschild metric and allows the user to set the launch angle of the light.  It also displays a plot of the effective potential well for the light. The default setting is light with an r-coordinate value of 3.5 and a launch angle of 1.571 (in radians).  

GR Schwarzschild Light Launch Angle 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_launch_angle.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_launch_angle.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 Launch Angle program. It describes how to use the gr_schwarzschild_light_launch_angle.jar file and contains short tutorial exercises for use with the gr_schwarzschild_light_launch_angle.jar file.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_launch_angle.pdf - 90kb 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 Launch Angle program. This distribution contains the GR Schwarzschild Light Launch Angle program, documentation, and exercises.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_launch_angle_distribution.zip - 629kb Compressed File

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

This file has previous versions.