Asteroids: A mathematical investigation

Students use two-dimensional vectors to model the movements of ships, missiles and asteroids as seen in the classic Asteroids video game.

Asteroids is a classic video game from the late 1970s that requires players to manoeuvre their way through an asteroid storm, whilst destroying the asteroids with missiles.

To move their rocket ship, players can apply forward or reverse thrust, however the velocity from the thrust is added to any existing velocity to determine the new velocity. In effect the movement of the rocket can be determined using vector operations.