That’s my opening slide when I delivered a talk about VSTO on an event “MSDN Day by MUGI Bandung”. The event was held at Universitas Suryakencana, Cianjur, on Valentine Day, Feb 14, 2009.
What’s on earth the relation between Kinematics and VSTO? Before I answer that, I need to tell that I did many talks about VSTO for the last 2 years. In all talks I always gave demo about how VSTO can be used to develop business-related apps.
Honestly, I’m quite bored with that kind of demo app. So, instead of giving demo of boring business app, I use VSTO to simulate simple motions in Kinematics. Since the audiences are mostly students, I think their minds are still fresh on this fundamental Physics kind of stuffs.
For you who are not familiar with Kinematics, it is a branch of classical mechanics that studies the motion of objects with consideration of ideal environment. Some motions those we are familiar since high school are linear motion (free fall, parabolic projectile motion, etc), and rotational motion.
For the demo, I develop simulation for free fall and parabolic projectile motion. Before I talk about code, lets squeeze some brains.
General form of linear motion equation:
For constant acceleration:
By that equation, we can determine the exact location of an object at certain time.
By using above equations, we can determine the equations involved in parabolic motion.
In free fall motion, where initial rate is zero and the only acceleration involved is gravity, then simplified equations are:
Using all those equations, I can simulate the motion using software. Off course you can use Mathematica or MATLAB to do comprehensive simulation and calculation. Well, those tools are for grownups (read: enthusiasts). Since I haven’t get my hand on those tools since college and since we are talking about VSTO, I’m gonna use VSTO to simulate the motion.
The simulation app of free fall motion will look like this. For this purpose, I code the app using Word 2007 Document project template in Visual Studio 2008.
When you click “Simulasi” button, the object will start to free fall. When it touch the ground, the needed time will be determined by using simulation and by calculating it using the formula.
The crowd applause when the object hit the ground. Thanks for the enthusiasm.
As for Parabolic Motion, I use Excel 2007 Workbook project template. The running app in Excel will look like this.
This is the photo when I was explaining about Kinematics:
I won’t explain how to develop the apps, you better download the code and try for your self. The code is really simple and won’t cause brain damage, I guarantee. Please download at:
http://dycode.com/files/folders/mugi/entry187.aspx
So, who says VSTO is only for business apps. Who says Microsoft Office can only be used for office workers. Physicists can leverage Microsoft Office for their job. They don’t need to learn FORTRAN, C++, MATLAB, only for doing simple simulation.
That’s it. Enjoy.