With all the free time (hah!) afforded by the new school year, we have been busy putting together new simulations for our students.  Two of these made their way onto simbucket.com: “Graph Matching” and “Tennis Ball Cannon”.  Both simulations are built using HTML5 technology and are optimized for phones and tablet screens.

We built “Graph Matching” as a supplement to the classic physics experience where students have to walk forward and backward in front of a motion sensor to match the graph on a computer screen.  Our simulated version is miniaturized to fit on the small screen.  Each student guides a character walking forward or backward to match a graph on their mobile device.  It worked great in physical science class to drive home the idea that steeper slopes = faster speeds.

Beware the wrath of an improperly matched graph!

“Tennis Ball Cannon” is a model of our tennis ball launcher that we use to shoot football field goals from ridiculous distances.  Our real-life tennis ball cannon typically launches tennis balls at greater than 80 meters per second, which meant that it was necessary to account for air drag in the model.  Students can easily adjust launch speed, launch angle, drag coefficient, air density, ball mass, and ball cross-section to make more accurate predictions of the trajectory of a tennis ball.  Our students had a great time using the model to determine how fast our cannon shoots.

Wow! Look at how much air drag slows things down!

We hope you enjoy these simulations as much as we have.  Please give them a try and let us know what you think!

We are excited to announce our newest simulation, “Balloon Charging Lab”. This simulation walks through the process of charging a balloon, and then allows users to charge other objects. We took great care to represent the motion of the electrons in the various materials in a way that is accessible to middle school and high school physics students, and are looking forward to using it in our classes next week.

The simulation features:
-A realistic balloon hanging from the ceiling by a stretchy string
-Insulators whose electrons randomly move in their atom’s “cloud”, but are influenced by all of the charges around them
-Conductors whose electrons are free to move throughout the material
-Electron transfer between the balloon and the other objects
-Physics-accurate force calculations based on the location of all point charges

Please let us know if you are using the simulation in the comments below!