Learn about conservation of energy with a skater dude! Build tracks, ramps and jumps for the skater and view the kinetic energy, potential energy and friction as he moves. You can also take the skater to different planets or even space!
Material Type: Simulation
Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing cabinet. Create an applied force and see the resulting friction force and total force acting on the cabinet. Charts show the forces, position, velocity, and acceleration vs. time. View a Free Body Diagram of all the forces (including gravitational and normal forces).
Material Type: Simulation
Learn how to make waves of all different shapes by adding up sines or cosines. Make waves in space and time and measure their wavelengths and periods. See how changing the amplitudes of different harmonics changes the waves. Compare different mathematical expressions for your waves.
Material Type: Simulation
Create a laser by pumping the chamber with a photon beam. Manage the energy states of the laser's atoms to control its output.
Material Type: Simulation
Produce light by bombarding atoms with electrons. See how the characteristic spectra of different elements are produced, and configure your own element's energy states to produce light of different colors.
Material Type: Simulation
See how light knocks electrons off a metal target, and recreate the experiment that spawned the field of quantum mechanics.
Material Type: Simulation
Light a light bulb by waving a magnet. This demonstration of Faraday's Law shows you how to reduce your power bill at the expense of your grocery bill.
Material Type: Simulation
Build circuits with capacitors, inductors, resistors and AC or DC voltage sources, and inspect them using lab instruments such as voltmeters and ammeters.
Material Type: Simulation
Light a light bulb by waving a magnet. This demonstration of Faraday's Law shows you how to reduce your power bill at the expense of your grocery bill.
Material Type: Simulation
Watch a string vibrate in slow motion. Wiggle the end of the string and make waves, or adjust the frequency and amplitude of an oscillator. Adjust the damping and tension. The end can be fixed, loose, or open.
Material Type: Simulation
A realistic mass and spring laboratory. Hang masses from springs and adjust the spring stiffness and damping. You can even slow time. Transport the lab to different planets. A chart shows the kinetic, potential, and thermal energy for each spring.
Material Type: Simulation
Blast a Buick out of a cannon! Learn about projectile motion by firing various objects. Set the angle, initial speed, and mass. Add air resistance. Make a game out of this simulation by trying to hit a target.
Material Type: Simulation
Add different salts to water, then watch them dissolve and achieve a dynamic equilibrium with solid precipitate. Compare the number of ions in solution for highly soluble NaCl to other slightly soluble salts. Relate the charges on ions to the number of ions in the formula of a salt. Calculate Ksp values.
Material Type: Simulation
This interactive Flash animation allows students to explore size estimation in one, two and three dimensions. Multiple levels of difficulty allow for progressive skill improvement. In the simplest level, users estimate the number of small line segments that can fit into a larger line segment. Intermediate and advanced levels offer feature games that explore area of rectangles and circles, and volume of spheres and cubes. Related lesson plans and student guides are available for middle school and high school classroom instruction. Editor's Note: When the linear dimensions of an object change by some factor, its area and volume change disproportionately: area in proportion to the square of the factor and volume in proportion to its cube. This concept is the subject of entrenched misconception among many adults. This game-like simulation allows kids to use spatial reasoning, rather than formulas, to construct geometric sense of area and volume. This is part of a larger collection developed by the Physics Education Technology project (PhET).
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive
Explore an active area of research in optical physics: producing designer pulse shapes to achieve specific purposes, such as breaking apart a molecule. Carefully create the perfect shaped pulse to break apart a molecule by individually manipulating the colors of light that make up a pulse.
Material Type: Simulation
Learn about position, velocity, and acceleration graphs. Move the little man back and forth with the mouse and plot his motion. Set the position, velocity, or acceleration and let the simulation move the man for you.
Material Type: Simulation
Watch a reaction proceed over time. How does total energy affect a reaction rate? Vary temperature, barrier height, and potential energies. Record concentrations and time in order to extract rate coefficients. Do temperature dependent studies to extract Arrhenius parameters. This simulation is best used with teacher guidance because it presents an analogy of chemical reactions.
Material Type: Simulation
Why do the lights turn on in a room as soon as you flip a switch? Flip the switch and electrons slowly creep along a wire. The light turns on when the signal reaches it.
Material Type: Simulation
Learn how to make waves of all different shapes by adding up sines or cosines. Make waves in space and time and measure their wavelengths and periods. See how changing the amplitudes of different harmonics changes the waves. Compare different mathematical expressions for your waves.
Material Type: Simulation
An electronics kit in your computer! Build circuits with resistors, light bulbs, batteries, and switches. Take measurements with the realistic ammeter and voltmeter. View the circuit as a schematic diagram, or switch to a life-like view.
Material Type: Simulation
