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In my visit to more realistic particle motion animation, $F=\frac{kq_1q_2}{d^2}$, $F=ma$, so: $$a=\frac{kq_1q_2}{md^2}$$ My velocity, integrating the above (from a site because I forgot how to do it), is $v=-kq_1q_2md+v_0$. Curiously, the integral of that, which should give displacement (!), is $d=d_0+(v_0d)-(kq_1q_2/m)(ln|d|)$. Does that work? If so, what do I do to get $v$, $d$ or $a$ at a certain time t? (I thought of getting $W=F\cdot d$ and trying to connect work to time thru another equation, maybe power?, etc., but now $F$ varies and also depends on $d$ (duh...) and I kinda stopped knowing what to do. Most (practically all?) stuff I saw deals with either varying acceleration in terms of time, or circular motion. Thanks in advance :)

ADDENDUM: This looks suspiciously close to gravity related questions, but in my case I have ions or charged particles in mind, where both masses matter, as well as the movements of both bodies. What brought up the issue was the question "were ions hard balls, when they 'collide' is the ricochet a fact, or is the attraction so great that it is already generating a -v higher than v of the conservation of momentum ricochet resulting from the collision? If there is a 'bounce', What is it like? etc.". (My initial model has only an Li+ and a F- 6000 picometers apart in a 1 cubic meter 'universe', in case you wonder what I am doing.)

  • The equation for acceleration is an inhomogeneous second-order differential equation and I honestly don't know how to solve it right now. However, I do know that what you did here is not right; because $v=dx/dt$. So in order to find $x$, you need to integrate $v$ over $t$ (not $x$ or $d$, as you did here.) i.e. $x=\int v dt \neq \int v dd$ (This mistake happened when finding $v$ as well.) In addition to these, dimension of the final answer is not correct. – Moctava Farzán Mar 23 '17 at 17:05
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  • While probably not obvious from the title, the question is fundamentally the same: given an inverse square law force, compute the position as a function of time. – Kyle Kanos Mar 23 '17 at 17:18
  • Aha, I felt I wouldn't get out of this one easily (translation: stop the programming and hit the calculus). Also, yes, I even cheated a bit on electrostatics in the gravity pages, which mostly consider g constant, and the ones that don't aren't very user friendly :O And I thought that Newton and Coulomb are so old that what I wanted was trivial by now. I'll take a look at the ugly formula from the possible duplicate. I'm a coder, and most formulas lose their aesthetic algebra look anyway once canned into code. Many thanks :) – Jorge Al Najjar Mar 23 '17 at 17:47

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$$a = \frac{dv}{dt}$$

$$a = \frac{dv}{dt} \frac{dx}{dx}$$

$$a = \frac{dv}{dx} \frac{dx}{dt}$$

$$a = v\frac{dv}{dx}$$

$$\int_{x_0}^x a.dx = \int_{v_0}^{v} v. dv$$

Here, $x$ is not the final position; it is a variable. Note that we are solving the differential equation for a general case.

$$2\int_{x_0}^x a .dx = v^2 - v^2_0$$

$$v^2 = v^2_0 + 2\int_{x_0}^x a .dx$$

$$v = \sqrt{v^2_0 + 2\int_{x_0}^x a .dx}$$

$$\frac{dx}{dt} = \sqrt{v^2_0 + 2\int_{x_0}^x a .dx}$$

$$\int_{0}^t dt = \int_{x_i}^{x_f} \frac{1}{\sqrt{v^2_0 + 2(\int_{x_0}^x a .dx)}} dx$$

Here, $x_f$ is the final position. If you need a general equation, you can replace $x_f$ with $x$ but be careful not to confuse the upper limit of the outside integral with the upper limit of the inner integral. They are two different things and the upper limit of the inner integral must be a variable for the sake of the outside integral.

Yashas
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  • Many thanks! My math is bronze age, but by "not confusing them", I understood you meant to evaluate the inner as a var (which would give me -2kq1q2/x) and not an upper limit to be evaluated, and then, using that to integrate the outer one (yikes). An online integrator game me a nice equation where v0 can't be 0, which made me wonder if I did the right thing, or if we just uncovered the "particles can't be at rest" property in a creepy way :) (It was already feeling creepy that we don't need time, but we have to insert it for human purposes and it ain't being easy...) – Jorge Al Najjar Mar 25 '17 at 18:52
  • What did you substitute for $a$ to get particles can't be at rest? – Yashas Mar 26 '17 at 03:54
  • My bad. It is that the software gave me a final integral where v0^3 comes in the bottom of a fraction, but I saw later the top is also zero if d and v0 are zero. I've been looking at that integral for a while now, wondering "do I dare ask how to get displacement in terms of time?" The final equation I got, making (k x q1 x q2/mass)=C, v=initial velocity and d=distance, was:

    t=[ C* (ln(∣ √(v^2d−2Cd)+v ∣) − ln( ∣ √(v^2d−2Cd)−v ∣)) +vd√(v^2d−2Cd) ] / v^3

    (I apologize on behalf of the universe for this, as I'm still to learn formatting...).

    – Jorge Al Najjar Mar 26 '17 at 04:32
  • To learn about mathjax, please read MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference. – Yashas Mar 26 '17 at 05:30