Escape Velocity Simulation...

If you throw something upwards fast enough, will it come back down again?

A rock is fired from the surface of a planet... will it reach infinity? 

• This simulation shows the displacement, velocity, acceleration, and time for the rock, and also the kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, and total mechanical energy of the planet + rock system. 

• The user can adjust the initial velocity of the rock, the mass and radius of the planet, and the mass of the rock. The user can also choose one of the planets in our solar system.

This simulation works best if device used to view the simulation uses a keyboard with arrow keys, as the left and right keys will enable the user to have fine control over the two velocity sliders. This ability is very useful for when the rock approaches infinity.

 This simulation opens in all recent popular computer browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera) and Chromebooks. EscapeVelocitySim does work on iPads and iPhones.