Hello again, I highly recommend giving the students tools and the freedom to code and visualize simple to intermediate problems whether in Mathematica or System Modeler. My opinion is that Mathematica is preferable because the skills are transferable to other career and recreational skills. Plus, it will give the students access to other things such as big data, etc.

I agree with Patrik, there are many people to help you get started. I am giving a week master course in problem solving at EPFL in late July. I'll teach some mathematica skills, show how to solve and visualize a few problems, and then challenge students to solve their own. The class is for Materials Science PhD students. You would be welcome to join. If you wish to join, please contact me offline.

W. Craig Carter

Hm, I don't know. If you really want to minimize the coding, you might be right... So far I've only seen people use SystemModeler in conjunction with Mathematica, it seems to me that you'll probably have to learn both. That led me to wonder if it might not be easier to do the simpler cases in Mathematica exclusively. But I might be very wrong. After all, there is the catapult and of course the xkcd squirrel. Both of these are mechanical problems that should be fairly close to your use cases, so SystemModeler could be a great choice.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful... By the way, I think it's awesome that you're willing to go the extra mile for your students!

Are you sure you need SystemModeler for this? I've never used SystemModeler personally, but I'd expect Mathematica to be the easier route for this type of a problem... (Mostly judging by the sheer number of really cool Demonstrations Project submissions.)

As for your specific questions, you may want to create a new thread for them and tag it as a question related to SystemModeler so that the right people will see it and answer.

As an educator you should be aware of a huge library (more than 10,000 submissions) of such applications available at the Wolfram Demonstration Project. For example, specifically for orbital motion you can search for three-body or look, say, for Astronomy category. Wolfram Language code and Mathematica notebooks are free to download and be adopted to your own purposes.

Dear Ch'Prof,

There is an example animation at the end of this. Just evaluate the code.

I've been working on developing Mathematica content for teaching STEM subjects at MIT. I often get asked to develop content from an astrodynamics class.

I am going to cut and paste some code that I debugged for a colleague showing a Mars-Earth transfer orbit. Unfortunately, this is only debugged and not commented. I think you may see some of the benefits of teaching via coding like this. Imagine teaching your students to code this up, and not just watch it.

Again, this is not a good and compact example of WL programming style, but it works.

r11 = 1; r21 = 1.5237`; \[Mu]sAU = 0.000295912`; v1 = \
Sqrt[\[Mu]sAU/r11]
v2 = Sqrt[\[Mu]sAU/r21]
valpha = Sqrt[\[Mu]sAU (2/r21 - 2/(r11 + r21))]
deltav = valpha - v2
solmefunc[theta0_, alpha_] := 
 NDSolve[{(r1^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] - r1[t]*th1'[t]^2 == -\[Mu]sAU/ 
     r1[t]^2, 
   r1[t]*(th1^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] + 2*r1'[t]*th1'[t] == 
    0, (r2^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] - r2[t]*th2'[t]^2 == -\[Mu]sAU /
     r2[t]^2, 
   r2[t]*(th2^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] + 2*r2'[t]*th2'[t] == 
    0, (r3^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] - r3[t]*th3'[t]^2 == -\[Mu]sAU /
     r3[t]^2, r3[t]*(th3^\[Prime]\[Prime])[t] + 2*r3'[t]*th3'[t] == 0,
    r1[0] == r11, th1[0] == 0, Derivative[1][r1][0] == 0, 
   Derivative[1][th1][0] == Sqrt[\[Mu]sAU/r11], r2[0] == r21, 
   th2[0] == 0, Derivative[1][r2][0] == 0, Derivative[1][th2][0] ==
    Sqrt[(\[Mu]sAU/r21)]/r21, r3[0] == r21, th3[0] == 0, 
   Derivative[1][r3][0] == alpha*deltav Sin[theta0], 
   Derivative[1][th3][0] == (v2 + alpha*deltav Cos[theta0])/r21}, {r1,
    th1, r2, th2, r3, th3}, {t, -100, 1000}]

Show[
 ParametricPlot[{rsol1[t - 99]*Cos[thsol1[t - 99]], 
   rsol1[t - 99]*Sin[thsol1[t - 99]]}, {t, 0, 500}, 
  PlotStyle -> {Blue, Thick}, AspectRatio -> 1, 
  PlotRange -> {{-1.6, 1.6}, {-1.6, 1.6}}],
 ParametricPlot[{rsol2[t]*Cos[thsol2[t]], 
   rsol2[t]*Sin[thsol2[t]]}, {t, 0, 500}, PlotStyle -> {Red, Thick}, 
  PlotRange -> {{-1.6, 1.6}, {-1.6, 1.6}}], 
 ParametricPlot[{rsol3[t]*Cos[thsol3[t]], 
   rsol3[t]*Sin[thsol3[t]]}, {t, 0, 500}, PlotStyle -> {Green, Thick},
   PlotRange -> {{-1.6, 1.6}, {-1.6, 1.6}}]]

Manipulate[{{rsol1, thsol1, rsol2, thsol2, rsol3, thsol3}} = {r1, th1,
     r2, th2, r3, th3} /. solmefunc[theta0, alpha]; Show[
  ParametricPlot[{rsol1[t]*Cos[thsol1[t]], 
    rsol1[t]*Sin[thsol1[t]]}, {t, 0, 800}, PlotStyle -> {Blue, Thick},
    AspectRatio -> 1, PlotRange -> {{-2.2, 1.8}, {-2.0, 2.0}}],
  ParametricPlot[{rsol2[t]*Cos[thsol2[t]], 
    rsol2[t]*Sin[thsol2[t]]}, {t, 0, 800}, PlotStyle -> {Red, Thick}, 
   PlotRange -> {{-2.2, 1.8}, {-2.0, 2.0}}], 
  ParametricPlot[{rsol3[t]*Cos[thsol3[t]], 
    rsol3[t]*Sin[thsol3[t]]}, {t, 0, 800}, 
   PlotStyle -> {Green, Thick}, 
   PlotRange -> {{-2.2, 1.8}, {-2.0, 2.0}}]], {{theta0, -Pi/3}, -Pi/3,
   Pi/3}, {{alpha, 1}, 1, 6}]

TimeGap = 83;
anim = Animate[
  ParametricPlot[{{rsol1[t - TimeGap]*Cos[thsol1[t - TimeGap]], 
     rsol1[t - TimeGap]*Sin[thsol1[t - TimeGap]]}, {rsol2[t]*
      Cos[thsol2[t]], 
     rsol2[t]*Sin[thsol2[t]]}, {rsol3[t]*Cos[thsol3[t]], 
     rsol3[t]*Sin[thsol3[t]]}}, {t, 0, T}, 
   PlotStyle -> { {Blue, Thick}, {Red, Thick}, {Green, Thick}}, 
   AspectRatio -> 1, PlotRange -> {{-1.8, 1.6}, {-1.6, 1.6}}], {T, 0, 
   259 }]