Dr Bruce Bartlett, mathematician and Stellenbosch University (SU) lecturer, unveiled and showcased his newly created applet at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing in 1969.
The event was held in the Mathematical Sciences and Industrial Psychology building on the 1st of August and played host to guest speakers such as Dr Pieter Maritz, Dr Milton Maritz, Professor Hansie Knoetze and Professor Willem Visser.
Dr Gillian Arendse, Master of Ceremonies and Deputy Director of Student Recruitment and Career Advice at SU, welcomed guests with an announcement that the evening would “bring together science and engineering”.
The applet called Moonshot! is an interactive platform that simulates the ‘figure eight’ free-return path the Apollo 11 took around the moon.
Dr Pieter Maritz, from the Mathematics Division, says “The applet simulates the movement of the loop based on [Isaac] Newton’s work.”
Maritz says he really enjoys the features the applet provides for engineers and mathematicians.
Link to applet here.
Bartlett says the app was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
On his inspiration, Bartlett says, “I was reading a book about how Apollo 11 flew to the moon by a guy called David Woods and he inspired me to really get going with this because he wrote the book because no one else did it.”
“I always thought I don’t know enough about the moon landings, so how can I really do something? But then I thought I want to be an enthusiast, so the idea was hatched to do something here at Stellenbosch. I thought let’s make an app,” says Barlett.
Bartlett says he was confident in his ability to build an applet and wanted to visually and interactively reproduce the figure eight orbit.
“I read some maths papers, I couldn’t quite understand some things so I plugged it into differential equations and eventually managed to get it going,” says Bartlett about this journey.
The event also hosted high school learners from Rhenish Girls’ High, Hoerskool Stellenbosch, Luckhoff High School and Reddam House Atlantic Seaboard.
Dr Bruce Bartlett shows a student how the control messages on Apollo 11 were communicated PHOTO: Cher Petersen
For students and high schoolers, Bartlett says the applet is beneficial in terms of appreciating the effects of gravity.
“It’s really interesting just to change the numbers and see how that affects the trajectories and when you change one thing and push a button you really start to get a feel for how gravity works.”
Bartlett says the applet is coded in the GAlgebra which scholars use at school in mathematics.