PhET Blog

Try the new Resonance Sim for advanced undergraduate students. Observe resonance in a collection of driven, damped harmonic oscillators. Vary the driving frequency and amplitude, the damping constant, and the mass and spring constant of each resonator. Notice the long-lived transients when damping is small, and observe the phase change for resonators above and below resonance.

Read about PhET in “Programming Digital Fun Into Science Education” where Noah Podolefsky, a PhET research scientist, talks about how the sims let middle schoolers in Texas better visualize physics concepts.

Have you seen PhET in other published articles? If so, let us know. Or if you’d like to include us in an article, please e-mail kathryn.dessau@colorado.edu.

This multi-level lesson will help students understand basic pendulum relationships. Use it as a homework or in-class activity. Students will experiment and learn how length, mass, starting height and gravity affect the motion of a pendulum.
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/contributions/view/3118

We’ve now reached over 50 million sims run or downloaded from our website. And, just in 2010, we logged over 15 million! For 2011, we’re hoping to reach over 30 million so tell your friends about PhET to help spread the word. And for finding out the latest, “Like” us on Facebook.

Help us make science fun so we can improve science literacy worldwide.