Thermonator vs MIT App Inventor

Thermonator: The Matter Maker is an engaging and educational app designed to help users see their own theories about how states of matter change from solids to liquids to gases. By manipulating and animating dots that move and collide into one another, users explore different properties of particles while modeling different states of matter. Go beyond static drawings with the Thermonator. Control the speed, attraction, bounce, and gravity of yellow and purple dots. Predict what will happen when you remove the divider that separates different dots and watch the fast particles (gas) bump into the slow particles (solid). Change kinetic parameters to understand that temperature is not an amount of stuff, but rather is best treated as the relative speed of particles. The Thermonator also helps users construct the causal agents for phase changes of matter, such as the change of particle speeds after colliding with other particles. The Thermonator was designed in collaboration with the award-winning FableVision multimedia production studio. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DRL- 1621299. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. A lesson plan for this app is available at http://short.concord.org/8a

MIT App Inventor is an educational tool to learn computational thinking and computational action principles through building mobile apps. Used by over one million people worldwide every year, it is one of the premier platforms for computer science education. Use this companion app to test drive projects, debug blocks code, and show your friends and family your creations. Using a blocks based programming language, design and code your own projects, or use one of the many books and curricula to learn about coding. App Inventor also includes built-in tutorials for running student workshops. This version of App Inventor includes over 60 components, from user interface elements such as buttons and switches, to sensors, connectivity and multimedia components so your projects can interact with the world.