Thermodynamics Gas Simulation

Built a Python gas model for a Physics Thermodynamics class project that simulates 5,000 point particles undergoing elastic collisions in a 2D rectangular container. The simulation advances in fixed timesteps (configurable dt), uses a spatial grid to reduce pairwise checks, and resolves elastic collisions conserving momentum and energy. Pressure is measured from momentum transfer during wall bounces (collected per second) and compared to the ideal gas prediction computed from particle count, area, and measured temperature. Speeds are streamed to speeds.csv for live histogram and kinetic-temperature plotting; optional frame dumps produce the animation shown at right. The model was validated by comparing time-averaged measured pressure to the ideal-gas expectation (percent differences typically <~3% for these parameters).