The Universe and More: “Physics at Your Fingertips”

This is a free online, resource for Physics 11 and 12 classes, mostly.  Topics include Kinematic Graph Interpretation, Waves, and Polarity, each has an interactive, quantitative and/or qualitative activity for students to investigate. Some work sheets are provided and the authors have recently included a host of interesting videos on a variety of different topics.

Unfortunately, it is possible for students to simply “guess and check” on the simulations until they pass a level.  The accompanying worksheets would mitigate this negative outcome, however. I would be inclined to use this site as a reinforcement activity, as opposed to a learning activity, so that as many students as possible would actually use the principles of physics.  It would be great if educators could embed questions, in between levels, to check for understanding, as students navigated through levels.

Of the videos that I have seen, they could be used in a Jasper Style or WISE platform as points of discussion and problem solving.  They each seem to revolve around a single concept in physics; students could discuss the principles of physics at play in the videos, in a forum on WISE or as a class discussion.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *