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High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

landgreen.github.io

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Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#31

Post by lilgreenland »

danesparza wrote: post #10
lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

I'm curious about the Javascript simulations -- which lessons contains those simulations? (I couldn't find any in the few lessons I looked at)

I like this one on wave propagation. https://landgreen.github.io/physics/notes/waves/waves/index....

(it's at the very bottom)

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#32

Post by lilgreenland »

andai wrote: post #3
lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

Hey, these are great. Must have taken a lot of work. Nice job! I wanted to do the same thing for a long time, but never got around to it, so seeing this made me very happy. It mostly works on my phone, too (layout).

MOSTLY, thats great!

sigh

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#33

Post by bakkoting »

lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

> I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

If you're taking nitpicks: some of your example calculations don't track units, like the ones on https://landgreen.github.io/physics/notes/momentum/1-intro/i.... I think they should: encouraging students to always track units in intermediate steps is really helpful for getting them to think about what they're doing and catch errors early, in my experience.

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#34

Post by lilgreenland »

bakkoting wrote: post #33
lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

> I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add. If you're taking nitpicks: some of your example calculations don't track units, like the ones on https://landgreen.github.io/physics/notes/momentum/1-intro/i... . I think they should: encouraging students to always track units in intermediate steps is really helpful for getting them to think about what they're doing an…

Thats an interesting point. I think high school physics teachers are split on units. I'm willing to change teams. The argument for just showing units at the end is that students who are just starting to master algebra have trouble with the extra symbols.

I think I should add units for more of the LaTex example problems. Maybe I could color code the units so it doesn't get confusing.

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#35

Post by lilgreenland »

sguav wrote: post #4
lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

I find this a fantastic work! I created my own simulations when studying these topics, and sure it helped much (though they were not as tidy and organized like these). Not sure if it was the effort to make the simulation that made things clearer, but I believe this can be indeed a wonderful resource.

Any time you have to explain some to someone else you can't lie to your self about how much you understand.

Also, I think the simulations can help one understand some of the emergent properties that come from physics principles.

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#36

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

furgooswft13 wrote: post #11

As far as physics simulations go, this is my favorite treasure trove: http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html Ripple Tank and Analog Circuit Simulator are my favs. I could play for days.

THIS THIS THIS!! This guy boggles my mind. I've used his simulations in every class I've taught, and my students are just as impressed as I am.

I owe this guy about 1000 beers. Seriously, I would love to meet him so I can thank him personally.

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#37

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

lilgreenland wrote: post #2

I just completed my two year project to build an online website to pair with my 11th grade physics classes. I hope it can be a resource for those learning and teaching physics. I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add.

These are really great—going to share the Waves page on @cookingwthsound. One thing I REALLY have been wanting to see, and maybe something you can try, is coupling the interactive visualization with the equation that generates it, and ideally showing the values plugged into that equation and make those values editable. Something to think about!

Re: High school physics course notes, with JavaScript simulations

#40

Post by mncharity »

lilgreenland wrote: post #34
bakkoting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've got some free time this summer so let me know if you have any advice about what else to add. If you're taking nitpicks: some of your example calculations don't track units, like the ones on https://landgreen.github.io/physics/notes/momentum/1-intro/i... . I think they should: encouraging students to always track units in intermediate steps is really helpful for getting them to think about what they're doing an…

Thats an interesting point. I think high school physics teachers are split on units. I'm willing to change teams. The argument for just showing units at the end is that students who are just starting to master algebra have trouble with the extra symbols. I think I should add units for more of the LaTex example problems. Maybe I could color code the units so it doesn't get confusing.

With conflicting objectives, it might be worth providing multiple versions. A version optimized for "the students' bottleneck on their upcoming high-stakes exam is arithmetic, not physics". A version emphasizing units - without which numbers are nonsensical - and deemphasizing numbers, down to dimensional analysis. A version emphasizing the equation's parts, and story, to provide a qualitative feel for the phenomenon.

Back when everyone was on desktop, I liked using mouseover popups. VR/AR is going to be great fun. :)

There's a style of research talk, which I think of as a "Cal Tech style", merely because the speaker has been from there the few times I've seen this. It's putting up a colorized equation, and spending the entire talk walking through its expressions. If someone knows of a good example on youtube, it might be one way to see the many layers of narrative present in an equation.

I had an "F = m a" interactive like this "A feel for: torque"[1], but I don't think it ended up online. That's a step beyond scaffolding a qualitative understanding of the phenomenon - developing a rough quantitative feel for it. [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...

FWIW, scientific practice is to have a space between number and units. If you'd like them close for pedagogy, perhaps \thinspace?

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