The objective of the Thomson problem is to determine the minimum electrostatic potential energy configuration of N electrons constrained to the surface of a unit sphere that repel each other with a force given by Coulomb's law. This project aims to use Mayavi and Numpy to illustrate the movement of point charges along the surface of a unit sphere using small time intervals. Damping will be applied to the movement of those charges as we constrain them to the surface of the sphere. On top of that, the potential energy of the configuration will also be plotted against time to see how the potential energy decreases to the minimum as the N electrons settle in the most stable configuration.
Install all the dependencies into your preferred conda environment. Run the following code python main.py [number of electrons] [time interval] [total duration]