CALCULATING THE GRAVITATIONAL FORCE BETWEEN TWO VIRTUAL OBJECTS IN AUGMENTED REALITY

The experimental investigation of Newton’s law of universal gravitation requires expensive and sensitive equipment. Therefore, it is often not possible to conduct such an experiment within a typical physics class. An alternative is to explore the general law of gravity in a virtual environment using simulations. The possibility to conduct virtual experiments today is very important, because in the immediate past we have witnessed that due to COVID-19 pandemic many students learned remotely. For that purpose an augmented reality simulation named GravitationalForceAR was invented. The simulation has been developed for mobile devices and runs on an Android operating system, making it very accessible for students and teachers at all educational levels. It allows the user to investigate how the gravitational force between two spherical bodies depends on their masses and mutual distance. Additionally, the simulation can be used to determine the value of the universal gravitational constant (G).