Experience Physics vs Science 8

EXPERIENCE PHYSICS is a series of innovative apps designed to motivate students to investigate basic scientific phenomena and concepts in physics through simulations and interactive labs. Using an inquiry-based learning approach, the apps challenge students with investigations and quizzes based on the students' explorations of each interactive unit. EXPERIENCE PHYSICS PROVIDES APPS WITH: • Dynamic simulations of scientific phenomena and concepts, such as mass and weight, the relationship between distance, time and speed, and energy transformations between different types of energy; • Multiple representations, such as dynamic graphs, tables, and interactive animations; • Investigations that help students learn by exploring inquiry questions; • Thought-provoking quizzes that are ideal for individual learning, small-group work, and teacher-led class instruction; • Scientific background of the relevant concepts introduced in each unit. EXPERIENCE PHYSICS UNITS INCLUDE: Mass and Weight enables students to measure the mass and weight of different objects on Earth, Moon, Mars, and Jupiter using a balance scale (for mass) and a spring scale (for weight). Students can investigate the difference between mass and weight by using the simulation to answer these inquiry questions: Is the mass of an object the same on different planets? Is the weight of an object the same on different planets? Based on your findings, what is the difference between mass and weight? SPEED IT UP enables students to explore different speeds of a vehicle, based on distance-time graphs that describe its movement. Students can investigate the relationship between distance, time and speed by using the simulation to answer these inquiry questions: How do different distance-time graphs describe different speeds? What happens to the slope of the graph when the speed of a vehicle changes? How does the graph describe one constant speed? How does it describe different constant speeds? ENERGY OF A PENDULUM enables students to explore energy transformations of a swinging pendulum, with and without friction. Students can investigate potential energy, kinetic energy, thermal energy, and energy transformations by using the simulation to answer these inquiry questions: What is the relationship between the pendulum's maximum potential energy at the beginning of its movement and its kinetic energy throughout the movement? Is this relationship the same with and without friction? If not, how does the relationship differ? ENERGY OF A SKATEBOARD RIDER enables students to explore energy transformations of a skateboard and rider, with and without friction. Students can investigate potential energy, kinetic energy, thermal energy, and energy transformations by using the simulation to answer these inquiry questions: What is the relationship between the skateboard's maximum potential energy at the beginning of its movement and its kinetic energy throughout the movement? Is this relationship the same with and without friction? If not, how does the relationship differ? ENERGY OF AN ELASTIC SPRING enables students to explore energy transformations of an elastic spring, with and without friction. Students can investigate potential energy, kinetic energy, elastic energy, thermal energy, and energy transformations by using the simulation to answer these inquiry questions: Assuming there is no friction in the system, what are the respective locations in the cycle at which the spring's potential, kinetic and elastic energies reach maximum values? What happens if you add friction to the system? STOPPING DISTANCE invites students to conduct experiments that investigate the effects of vehicle speed and driver reaction time on the vehicle's stopping distance. How does the driver's reaction time (slow or fast) affect the vehicle's stopping distance? How does the vehicle's speed affect its reaction distance and braking distance?

These are a few tools for helping visualize middle school science. I spent a year volunteer tutoring middle school (grade 8) science students. While doing that, I created an app with a few simple demonstrations and practice tests to help them. The modules included were those that illustrated or helped practice the concepts my students had trouble either understanding or remembering. The test module contains every test the students took. Hot Molecules is an interactive demonstration of the effects of heating and cooling on molecular activity. Will it float? is an interactive lab simulation for determining density. Questions is a test-practice module for all subjects thus far covered (phase changes, heat transfer, density, atoms, molecules, reactions, atmosphere). Buckets is a category builder to help understand grouping of like things on arbitrary traits Which is Bigger? is an interactive statistics exploration, showing how much overlap there is between categories and how important sample size is. How do population dynamics of the species populations in a food web interact? Play with the simulation and ecological and human-introduced factors. Watch out for natural disasters! Other demonstrations and test topics are added periodically.