A Macroscopic Model of Quantum Mechanical Systems

Description

This research uses a computer simulation in Python to model a network of coupled pendula that has been constructed as a macroscopic model for quantum mechanical systems. Our system consists of 22 actual masses and 2 dummy masses representing specified boundary conditions. A Runge-Kutta integrator was used for the simulation because of its ability to “cancel” the error associated with each timestep. The damping parameter used in the simulation was experimentally determined and could change over time to achieve good convergence of the simulation. Simulation results for a range of experimental conditions will be presented to show resonance and wave tunneling phenomena.