Newton’s second law as a differential equation

This section is especially meant for readers who want to relate what we are doing here with what you would typically find in physics textbooks or on physics web sites or Wikipedia. You can safely skip it if you wish.

If you are a serious physics programmer, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself digging into physics textbooks or online sources at some point or other. Now, if you are looking for the solution of any problem involving Newton’s second law, chances are that you will come across things called differential equations, and pages of math to solve them analytically. How does all that stuff relate to our approach of solving Newton’s law numerically as discussed in the last section?

Taking a deeper ...

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