THE PHYSICS OF A TRAMPOLINE ARTIST

The following simulation was developed by Professor Arun Srinivasa of Texas A&M University. 

See below the simulation is of a tampoline artist suspended in the air. The purple arrow is the force of gravity on the man. when you press the run button(The blue triangle on the right hand side of the simulation), he will fall down and begin bouncing from the hard floor. 

BEFORE YOU PRESS THE RUN BUTTON

Answer the following question

Q1: Notice that the man starts out at a height of 6 units from the ground. Do you think that when he bounces, he will

(a) go higher than 6 units?

(b) lower than 6 units?

(c) will jump back exactly six units?

Q2: Which way will his velocity point when he is falling? up or down?

Q3: Which way will his velocity point when he is bouncing up?

Q4: What about his acceleration vector?

NOW RUN THE SIMULATION (pausing or rerunning) :

Watch his velocity vector (green arrow) and acceleration vectors ( black arrow)

Q5: Did he do what you expected? what did you not anticipate? 

Q6: Does he bounce back to the same height every time?

Q7: Give a physical rationalization as to why he doesnt bounce back every time.

Q8: What is the correlation between how fast he tumbles and how high he jumps

Q9: Now give a better answer than Q4 (hint : consider the total energy)

Q10: Why does this man not jump higher that his initial height? how is that possible for a human to jump higher and higher each time? (hint: can this trampoline man do work?)

A simulation built for a Physics textbook problem

Basic motion concepts can be difficult to understand for some students. Following is a video from People's Physics Book by James Dann:

Here is a simulation we made, in just a few minutes, to simulate this scenario:



The simulation allows students to engage with the concepts in a hands on manner. They can click the "Charts" button at the bottom left to see how the velocity, acceleration and other variables change with time. Students can also see the numbers updating as the simulation progresses. First click on the arrow icon at the top and select one of the cars. Then click on the "Data" button at the bottom left. Finally, the "Settings" button allows control of which signals are charted, copy/paste access to chart data and even comparison with analytical expressions to check the accuracy of simulation results.

Its important to note that creating and publishing this simulation to this blog took only a couple of minutes. It was done in the web-browser without any software download or installation. Just login to www.siminsights.com and start creating and sharing your simulations.

Empowering STEM teachers with embeddable web-simulation authoring

As a physics or engineering teacher at high school or college level, do you have ideas for how to engage students through interesting simulations? Do you find that available simulations do not effectively meet  the needs of your students? Do you wish you could whip-up a few simulations quickly to address just the specific needs of your students?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above then take a look at SimInsights apps. In less than a minute, you will have your first simulation running, without writing any code, and without installing any software. You will then be able to customize how students interact with your simulation and finally publish to the web. And thats not all. Your simulations will work with touch input on ipad, can be embedded in other pages such as blogs, online quizzes, wiki pages and even e-books.

By empowering teachers to easily and flexibly create and publish simulation based learning content, we are making STEM learning more meaningful and fun. In the coming weeks, you will see announcements about a few pioneering teachers publishing interesting simulation based learning content. We look forward to your comments.

A new streamlined embeddable simulator

Today we are releasing a new streamlined design for our embeddable simulator (player).



Click the play button at the top to start the simulation. Then try out the Chart and Settings buttons at the bottom.

Just like embeddable video and slideshow players, the web needs embeddable simulators that facilitate meaningful discussions and stimulate thought. SimInsights is filling this void by providing simulators for mechanical systems and electrical circuits. Here is how it works. You log in to www.siminsights.com, free of charge, to build your simulation and then make it public. You can then copy the embed code and paste into blogs, wiki pages, online quizzes, e-books and other places.

Here are three examples of how the embeddable simulator can be used:

1. Blogs: As part of a blog post (see above), simulations can promote deeper discussions about physics and engineering. 
2. E-books: Embedded in e-books such as flexbooks by CK12, they can help students learn concepts through hands-on interaction. 
3. Assessments: When embedded in online quizzes, the simulations can assess student understanding in rich ways that go well beyond multiple choice questions.

Whether your audience is using smartphones or iPad or PC or Mac, the SimInsights embeddable simulator makes your simulations universally accessible, so that the maximum number of people worldwide can benefit from it. Log in to siminsights.com and try it out.

A simulation for motion concepts

Following is a simulation for problem #5 in CK12 People's Physics Book by James H. Dann. It is an essential problem, with the graphs of the motion (both v vs. t and x vs. t) being especially hard for the students.

Click the strobe icon (one that looks like an orange movie camera) and select one of the cars to see snapshots through time.

SimInsights adds touch input to web-based collaborative simulations

Now you can build SimMotion models on the iPad using touch! Just touch the screen to create a particle, or drag your finger to define a rectangular body. To connect bodies with springs, dampers etc., simply touch a particle and drag your finger to the next particle. Simulations have never been so easy and fun. We hope you will enjoy the addition of touch input to web-based collaborative simulations. Let us know what you think.

 

Matthew Peterson on interactive software designed for math learning

Excellent talk by Matt Peterson, founder of Mind Research, on how current teaching is flawed in its extreme emphasis on the use of words when clearly words do not work for most students.

Matt says: "...instead of just throwing a bunch of words at students, we create rich opportunities for them to create their own dots in their own heads, about how math works. And when students play an active role in figuring out how math works, they want to talk about it. It sparks mathematical talk. In this way, a language free approach can improve language skills."

Have you heard about Gooru? Gooru is a platform for social learning, created by EdNovo.org. Gooru does an amazing job of allowing teachers to create ClassPlans - a wonderfully usable aggregation of various learning resources including textbooks from CK12 and other sources, videos, games and simulations. Gooru heavily uses all Google technologies including search, chat, voice and video calling, etc. Gooru is by far the best designed content aggregation platform that I have seen. Its current focus is k-12 and it is accessible to teachers by invitation only.

Kudos to the EdNovo team for realizing this tranformative platform, and all the best for future success!