Online game based learning of physics concepts

We are developing a set of educational self-paced stand-alone web-based games to help students learn basic physics concepts. These games integrate visual instructions with scientific inquiry pedagogy. The games are  designed to help students develop scientific reasoning skills and construct physics knowledge using the scientific inquiry approach.

Last semester we tested one of our games in an introductory physics class in a community college. The goal of this wave mechanics focused game was to investigate concepts of period, wavelength, frequency and wave speed as well as the relations between those concepts. Students were asked to complete the game and fill a survey as a homework assignment prior to the lecture on wave mechanics. All students received a full score regardless of the performance in the game. Click here to see a high school student playing the wave game and here to play the game yourself.


Twenty students played the game and filled the survey. Although half of them had taken a physics course before, most of them had none or very little knowledge of wave mechanics concepts. Most of the students were able to complete all four levels in the game completely, spending on average 24 minutes. The figure below shows the survey results.

The survey showed that most of the students significantly improved their understanding of the concepts. It is noteworthy that attitude questions are typically not very trustworthy because of general willingness of students to please the teacher. Nevertheless many students gave positive comments and constructive suggestions on improving the game.

SimNewton Helps Students Think Like Engineers and Scientists

Engineers and scientists look at systems from many viewpoints. They look at images, videos, charts and text. These views together allow the professional to understand the system much better than any single view would. Software products that enable multiple views cost upto tens of thousands of dollars and take considerable effort to master. Jobs that require facility with such software are often the highest paid in the company and those workers are held in high esteem.

So it makes sense to try to integrate similar software in the curriculum at all levels of education, to prepare students to tackle complex problems using powerful software. This is the idea behind SimNewton - to let students work and think like scientists by looking at real world systems from many viewpoints - as shown in the figure below.



The figure shows a bouncing ball being simulated in SimNewton which provides four different views to students: animation, text and images, YouTube video and charts. Together these views allow the student to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of a bouncing ball than would be possible with just one of the views.

SimNewton is free for six months and is simple to learn, as is evident from the following brief instructions that were provided to students at the first SimNewton pilot conducted at Fremont High School near San Francisco last May:

1. Open the Safari Browser: Finder Face > Applications > Safari
2. Go to www.siminsights.com
3. Click on the orange button in the top right: “Sign In”
4. Click on a type of account (Google or Yahoo)
5. Enter your log in information
6. Click on “New” to make a model

Thats it! There is no users manual, reference guide or FAQ list. The students appreciated the simplicity of SimNewton. One student wrote:

"What my group and I liked about SimNewton was its easy-to-use ability. It is simple and efficient..."
-Ben A.

Please visit www.siminsights.com for more student quotes and try out SimNewton yourself.

Letting Others Play with Your Simulations

There are many many simulations of interesting systems sitting on a hard drive, not being used by anyone. This is not because the creator wants to keep the simulations a secret, but because there is no easy way to share them with others. SimNewton makes sharing as easy as it should be.

Following is an interactive lumped parameter model of a cantilever beam built using SimNewton. Go ahead and click the Play icon and the simulation starts, just like a YouTube video, with one key difference: you can interact with the simulation as it runs, using your mouse. Remember to turn up your volume to hear the sounds.



For more such models, please visit our repository.

SimNewton used by high school seniors for exploring mechanics concepts

Last week marked the end of a month long research class at Pomona College. Part of the Pomona Academy for Youth Success (PAYS), the class provided students an authentic computational research experience . Starting with only a brief introduction to SimNewton, the team of five students explored advanced concepts such as stability, buckling and resonance. They then put their understanding to use in evaluating various bridge designs (see poster). The class met four times a week for two hours each day.

Collaborative simulations

A simulation takes too much effort to keep it to yourself. So its not surprising that most people share their simulations and the insights they afford. This sharing happens through conversations, meetings and presentations, but not through the browser because there is no Google Docs for simulations. At SimInsights, we are trying to change that.

We are working to enable collaborative simulations in the browser. We expect that this will facilitate meaningful discussions about rich behaviors that simulations almost always exhibit. We expect that this capability will help learning at all levels.

Please visit www.siminsights.com to experience our products.