The Scenario.

For this lab, we would like you to write a program that simulates the action of two bar magnets. Each magnet will be represented by a simple rectangle with one end labeled "N" for north and the other labeled "S" for south. Your program should allow the person using it to move either magnet around the screen by dragging it with the mouse. You know that opposite poles attract, while similar poles repel each other. So, if one magnet is dragged to a position where one or both of its poles is close to the similar poles of the other magnet, the other magnet should move away as if repelled by magnetic forces. If, on the other hand, opposite poles come close to one another, the free magnet should move closer and become stuck to the magnet being dragged.

To make things a bit more interesting one should be allowed to flip a magnet from end to end (swapping the poles) by clicking on the magnet without moving the mouse. This will provide a way to separate the two magnets if they get stuck together (since as soon as one of them is reversed it will repel the other).

As usual, copy the folder Lab3-Magnets from the folder cs051/labs. Copy this into your CS51Workspace folder. Start up eclipse by double-clicking on the icon on your desktop. When it has opened, go into the file menu and select import. Select "Existing project into workspace" and click the "next" button. Click on "browse" next to the "Select root directory" entry and navigate to the magnet folder in your CS51Workspace folder. When magnet is selected, push the finish button and you will be ready to work (note that you may need to check the box for "Copy projects into workspace"). The "default package" subdirectory in the left panel of eclipse will now contain three files: Magnet.java, Pole.java, and MagnetGame.java. We have provided you with the complete Pole class, while you must complete the Magnet and MagnetGame classes.

Here is a demo of what we have in mind:

Some Video Game Physics

If you are worried that you might not remember (or never knew) enough about magnetic fields to do this assignment, relax. First, we will be providing you with most of the code that does the "physics". Even if you had to write all the code yourself, you still would not need a deep knowledge of magnetism and mechanics. Instead, you could exploit something every special effects expert or video game author must know. Most humans observe the world carelessly enough that even a very coarse approximation of reality will appear "realistic". Our code takes advantage of this by simplifying the behavior of our magnets. We never compute the force between two magnets, just the distance between them. If they get too close together, our code moves them apart or makes them stick together.

Despite the fact that we will provide most of the code to handle this approximate version of physics, there are two aspects of the magnet's behavior that will impact the code you write. The first is a simplifying assumption. The magnets will not be allowed to rotate. They only slide up, down and across the screen.

More significantly, there is one aspect of the behavior of the real magnets that we must model fairly well. Above, we said that we just compute the distance between two magnets. This would not really be accurate enough, since it is not the distance between the magnets that matters, but the distances between their similar and opposite poles.

Consider the two pairs of magnets shown below:

The magnets shown in the left pair are the same distance apart as the magnets in the right pair. In the pair on the left, however, the opposite poles are close together while the similar poles are relatively far apart. The situation is reversed in the other pair. In one case, one would expect the magnets to attract, in the other to repel.

So it is the poles rather than the magnets that really matter when deciding whether something should be attracted or repelled. As a result, instead of just manipulating magnet objects in your program, you will also need objects that explicitly represent poles.

Design of the program.

We will help you design this program by identifying the classes and methods needed. In particular, you will need two classes named Magnet and Pole and a class that is an extension of WindowController. We will provide the code for the Pole class. You will write the other two class definitions.

Pole.

You will be able to use the Pole class we have defined much like one of the built-in graphics classes we constructed for the class. In this handout, we explain how to construct a new Pole and describe the methods that can be used to manipulate Poles. You can then write code to work with Poles just as you wrote code to work with FilledRects. We will see, however, that the interaction of Poles with the rest of your program is a little more complex than that of rectangles.

A Pole's constructor will expect you to specify the coordinate position at which it should initially appear and the label that should be displayed (i.e. "N" or "S"). It will also require you to provide as parameters the canvas and the Magnet to which the new pole will belong. The signature of the constructor for the Pole class is:

   public Pole( Magnet container, 
                double x, double y, 
                String poleName,
                DrawingCanvas canvas )

Since you will usually create the Poles within the code of the Magnet constructor, the name this will refer to the Magnet that contains the Pole. Thus, the code to construct a Pole might look like:

   new Pole( this, poleX, poleY, "N", canvas);

where poleX and poleY are the coordinates around which the label "N" should be displayed.

The Pole class provides several methods similar to those associated with graphical objects. In particular, Pole's methods will include getX, getY, getLocation, and move, which all behave like the similarly named methods associated with basic graphic classes.

In addition, the Pole class has two more specialized methods: attract and repel. Each of these methods expects to be passed the Pole of another magnet as a parameter. If you say,

   somePole.attract( anotherPole )

then somePole and anotherPole should have opposite polarities. If somePole is a north pole, then anotherPole must be a south pole and vice versa. The repel method, on the other hand, assumes that the pole provided as its parameter has the same polarity as the object to which the method is applied. Therefore, if you write:

   somePole.repel( anotherPole )

and somePole is a north pole, then anotherPole should also be a north pole.

Each of these methods checks to see if the two Poles involved are close enough together to exert enough force to move the magnets to which they belong. If so, they use the move and moveTo methods of the magnets to either bring the magnets closer together or move the free magnet so that they are far enough apart that they would no longer interact.

The good news is that we have already written the code for all the methods described above and will provide these methods to you.

In summary, the Pole class provides the following methods. Note that we have given you complete method headers here, illustrating the format to follow in defining your own methods. Think carefully about how you will invoke each of the following methods.

Design of part 1

For the first part of this program, you should just worry about creating the magnets and moving them around. We'll worry about their interactions (attracting and repelling) later. To reinforce the notion that preparing for your lab section greatly increases the value of the time spent in lab, we want you to come to lab with a written design. For this lab, we will give you feedback on the design. In later labs, we will grade those designs as well. At the end of this section, we will be more specific about what you should bring with you to lab. To give you a better sense of what we mean by a written design, you can see a sample design for the first part of the laundry lab.

The key to this lab is the design of the Magnet class. A magnet is represented by a FramedRect and two poles. To ensure that our Poles work well with your Magnets, each magnet should be 150 by 50 pixels. The poles should be located near each end of the magnet. We recommend locating them so the distance from the pole to the closest end, top, and bottom, are all 1/2 the height of the magnet (i.e. 25 pixels away from each).

Your Magnet class will have to provide the methods that will enable someone running your program to drag magnets about within a window. The Magnet class will have to include the following methods:

• public void move( double xoff, double yoff )

• public void moveTo( Location point )

• public Location getLocation()

• public boolean contains( Location point )

The headers for these methods are already included in the starter file for the Magnet class. These methods should behave just like the corresponding methods for rectangles and ovals. In particular, the offsets provided to the move method are doubles, someMagnet.getLocation() should return a Location value, and someMagnet.contains(point) should return a boolean. (You will add other methods later, but we'll postpone discussing them until you need them.)

In order to write these methods, your magnet will need to contain several instance variables. A magnet should consist of a rectangle and two poles, and you will need instance variables for each of those. The constructor for a Magnet needs the following parameters:

• Coordinates of the upper-left corner of the magnet,

• The canvas that will hold the magnet

The header of the constructor for the Magnet class should be:

• public Magnet(Location upperLeft, DrawingCanvas canvas)

It should construct the framed rectangle forming the outline of the magnet (using the parameters), and should create two poles in the correct positions inside the magnet (see the earlier discussion on the constructor for Pole).

Once these instance variables have been declared and initialized, writing the methods should be easy. The move and moveTo methods should simply move the rectangle and poles to their new positions. The move method is pretty straightforward as all three items get moved the same distance, but moveTo takes a little thought as the Pole class does not have a moveTo method. Instead you'll need to calculate how far to move it. (Hint: check to see how far the rectangle is moving from its current position.) The method getLocation will simply return the location of the rectangle, while a magnet contains a point exactly when the rectangle does.

When you have this much of the Magnet class written, you can test it by writing MagnetGame, an extension of the WindowController class that creates a magnet, and then write methods onMousePress and onMouseDrag that will allow you to drag it around. To run your program, you need to create a new applet configuration using the Run... command from the Run menu as in the past two labs. For this lab, set the width of the applet to 420 and the height to 400 on the Parameters tab.

Once onMousePress and onMouseDrag work, it should be pretty easy to add a second magnet and be able to drag either of them around. We suggest declaring a variable (movingMagnet) that can be associated with the appropriate magnet and used to remember which magnet to move whenever the mouse is dragged. This variable will be useful in other parts of your assignment as well.

As you were writing the methods for the Magnet class, you probably noticed that two additional methods are already included there. They are getWidth and getHeight. These are used by the Pole class in ensuring that the methods attract and repel draw the magnets appropriately in the window.

As mentioned earlier, you should bring a design with you to lab. The design should show us how you plan to organize your Magnet and MagnetGame classes to accomplish the actions required of the first part of this lab only. We have told you what methods each class should have and the behavior that they should provide. You should write (in English, not Java) your plan for how each method will provide the necessary behavior. You should also describe (in English) what variables you feel are necessary for each class. This level of preparation will allow you to progress much more quickly in lab so that you can take better advantage of the presence of the instructors and TAs.

Part 2: Flipping the magnet

When you click on a magnet, it should reverse its north and south poles. Add method flip to class Magnet that interchanges the north and south poles. Remember that you can move a Pole, and one possible way to implement flip is to just move the north pole to the south pole's position and vice versa.

Add an onMouseClick method to your MagnetGame class that invokes flip.

Part 3: Interacting magnets

Finally, after you move or flip a magnet, you will need to tell the magnet to check if it is close enough to the other magnet to move it. To make this possible, include a method named interact in your Magnet class. The method interact should be invoked on the moving (or changing) magnet, and should take as a parameter the Magnet that has not just been moved or flipped. It should effect the interaction by calling the attract and repel methods of its poles with the poles of the other magnet passed as parameters appropriately. For simplicity, you might want to just check for attraction first, and only worry about repelling after the attraction works correctly.

When writing interact you will discover you need to add two more methods in the Magnet class to enable you to access the other magnet's poles: getNorth and getSouth. Both of these methods will return objects belonging to our Pole class. Also, note that the attract method that we have provided in the Pole class calls the moveTo method that you must define in the Magnet class. If you do not fill in the body of this method correctly, attraction will not work properly.

You will need to call the interact method every time one of the magnets is either moved or flipped. Because you want to send the interact message to the magnet that moved and provide the other magnet as the parameter, you will need to keep track of which is which. As we suggested above, whenever you start dragging a magnet (i.e., in the onMousePressed method), you should associate a name with the moving magnet. You will also find it convenient to associate a name with the resting magnet in order to call your interact method appropriately.

When your program is finished, your Magnet class should have a constructor and method bodies implemented for getLocation, move, moveTo, and contains, for which headers were provided. In addition, you will need to provide the methods interact, getNorth, getSouth, and flip. You should think carefully about the structure of the method headers for each of these. To help you in formulating your ideas, the following gives typical uses of the methods:

• someMagnet.interact( otherMagnet ); // someMagnet & otherMagnet are magnets

• Pole theNorthPole = someMagnet.getNorth();

• Pole theSouthPole = someMagnet.getSouth();

• someMagnet.flip(); // someMagnet is a magnet

Getting Started

The starter project contains several files intended to hold Java code. The file MagnetGame.java should be used to write the extension of the WindowController that will serve as your "main program". The Magnet.java file should be used to hold your code for the Magnet class. Both of these files will initially contain skeletons of the code that you will need to complete. The final ".java" file will be Pole.java. It will hold our implementation of the Pole class. Remember, you should not change Pole.

Due Dates

This assignment is due at 11 pm on Wednesday evening.

Submitting Your Work

Before submitting your work, make sure that each of the .java files includes a comment containing your name. Also, before turning in your work, be sure to double check both its logical organization and your style of presentation. Make your code as clear as possible and include appropriate comments describing major sections of code and declarations. Use the Format command in the Source menu to make sure your indentation is all consistent.

Turn in your project the same as in past weeks. Use the Export command from the File menu. Make sure that the Magnet project is exported to a new folder and that you give the folder a name that includes your name and identifies the lab. Then quit Eclipse and drag your folder to the dropoff folder.

Quick Reference for the Pole Class

This section provides no new information. It is a quick reference to the constructor and methods provided in the Pole class that you will be using.

 Constructor

To create a new pole:
public Pole (Magnet parent, double x, double y, String name, DrawingCanvas canvas)

 Accessor Methods

To get information about a pole:
  Getting the x coordinate of the pole's center:

 Mutator Methods

To modify a pole:
  Moving the pole relative to its current location:

Sample Design

This section shows the sample design for the first part of the laundry lab. Use this to help you understand what to include in your own sample design.

The laundry lab includes constants for the following values:

• LEFT_BASKET_X and LEFT_BASKET_Y - the location of the leftmost basket.

• BASKET_SIZE - the size of the baskets. They will be square and all the same size.

• BASKET_SPACING - the amount of space between baskets.

• SWATCH_LOC - the starting location of the laundry.

• SWATCH_SIZE - the size of the laundry. It is square.

The program contains the following instance variables:

• swatch - a FilledRect representing the laundry

• swatchFrame - a FramedRect drawn around the laundry. This is necessary so that we can see the laundry when it is white. The swatch and swatchFrame will always be moved together.

• whites, darks, colors - 3 FramedRects representing the 3 laundry baskets

• correctBasket - a FramedRect representing the basket where the current swatch should be dragged to. It will have the same value as one of whites, darks, and colors depending on the color of the laundry.

• colorGenerator - a random int generator used to select the next color for the swatch. It will range over the values 1 to 3 since we are selecting from 3 colors.

initializes the correct basket. It does this as follows:

• Draw the swatch and swatch frame in the initial position. The initial color is white.

• Draw the 3 baskets labeling them "whites", "darks", and "colors".

• Set correctBasket to whites since the first laundry is white.

user clicks the mouse in the correct basket, and then changes the color of the laundry. It does this as follows:

• If the user clicks in the correct basket

  • Use the random number generator to get the next color.

  • If the random number generator returns 1, the next laundry will be white and the correct basket is the white basket.

  • Else if the random number generator returns 2, the next laundry will be black and the correct basket is the darks basket.

  • Otherwise, the next laundry will be red and the correct basket is the colors basket.

051
Department of Computer Science
Pomona College