Optimizing gravitation calculation for particles in a zero gravity 2d space

Question

I\'ve have created a small visualisation of particles in python. I\'m caclulation the movement of particels in a 2D space with zero gravity. As each particle attracts all o

Answer 1

(This may should go in a comment but I don't have the needed reputation to do that)

I don't see how you do the time stepping. You have

P.speedx -= acceleration * xc
P.speedy -= acceleration * yc

but to get the new speed at time t+delta_t you would do

P.speedx -= acceleration * xc * delta_t
P.speedy -= acceleration * yc * delta_t

and then update the position like so:

P.x = P.x + P.speedx * delta_t
P.y = P.y + P.speedy * delta_t

Then to your speed concern. Maybe it would be better to store the particle information not in a class but in numpy arrays? But I don't think you can avoid loops.

Also, have you looked at wikipedia, there it describes some methods to speed up the calculation.

(edited due to Mike's comment)