- This page was last edited on 25 April 2018, at 13:39.
Tracker is an open source physics software that can do plenty of cool things like map velocity of moving objects by automatically tracking features in a video. It's free to download and use and can be found here: https://physlets.org/tracker/. It's great to use if you are building models of earth systems and want to see how these systems deform! In the tutorial here, flubber was made out of borax, Elmer's glue and water and run down a ramp to simulate a glacier flowing down a valley. Beads placed on the surface of the flubber glacier are what is tracked, symbolizing features that might be visible on a real glacier like dirt bands. After the velocity data is collected in Tracker, it is put into Surfer for visualization. Surfer isn't free, but it's a great bit of software: http://www.goldensoftware.com/products/surfer. Once in Surfer, contour maps can be made of the flubber glacier (or whatever you're tracking) and strain rates can be calculated as well! This tutorial walks you through basic operations in Tracker and Surfer.
