Simple Sims for Complex Concepts
What's a Sim?
Force Mass and Motion, F. W. Sinden
- Interactive Vizualizations
- Virtual Labs
- Universe Simulators
- ...
What's great about books?
- They don't need instruction manuals (at least the good ones don't).
- They are easy to open.
- The reader can only focus on one, or maybe two, things at a time.
- They progress sequentially, rather than in parallel.
- Can be shared
Hu(m || b)ble Origins
My 'astro friend' needed to do the classic overhead transparancy demo that shows there is no center in an expanding universe. But, thanks to all the 'smart edu-tech' installations, all the overhead projectors had been discarded.
So, I made him a virtual one.
Full collection of sims and other into physics/astronomy coding resources.
Primary Use: Embedded "figures" in HTML course content (lecture slides, ebooks, web pages).
Standards:
- Simple - 1 concept at a time
- Mobile Friendly
- Uncluttered (minimal design elements)
- OER
Dirty Little Secret
Who learns the most?
So, let's try letting students build them.
DIY Science Sims was a funded project that ran for a few years where we paid UG students (novice coders mostly) from all over CUNY to learn the art of building simple sims.
Cats on a raft
Homework: Build a Sim
Yes, it can be done. (With of course a few years' iterative work by the instructor)
Happy to chat more offline (online) about this project for anyone interested.
Wrap up
- Sims don't need to simulate the entire universe
- Almost any figure from a textbook (or research paper) can be transformed into something dynamic & interactive.
- And, I'd say it's a perfectly reasonable thing to offer for an Astro 101 type project.
We're also doing more photo-realistic sims & sci-viz over at the:
Check out www.openspaceproject.com
P5.js
Javascript library for animation/interactivity
Made for beginners but also quite capable
No dev environment needed - just a browser
