A primer to numerical simulations: The perihelion motion of Mercury

TL;DR

This paper proposes using numerical simulations of Mercury's perihelion motion as an educational tool for high school students, illustrating how computational methods support understanding of general relativity.

Contribution

It introduces a structured teaching approach using numerical simulations to explain Mercury's perihelion motion, including code development, visualization, and uncertainty estimation methods.

Findings

Effective educational framework for high school students

Method for estimating effect size and uncertainty

Visualization techniques for simulation results

Abstract

Numerical simulations are playing an increasingly important role in modern science. In this work it is suggested to use a numerical study of the famous perihelion motion of the planet Mercury (one of the prime observables supporting Einsteins General Relativity) as a test case to teach numerical simulations to high school students. The paper includes details about the development of the code as well as a discussion of the visualization of the results. In addition a method is discussed that allows one to estimate the size of the effect as well as the uncertainty of the approach a priori. At the same time this enables the students to double check the results found numerically. The course is structured into a basic block and two further refinements which aim at more advanced students.