PhET Blog

Have you received our December 2012 newsletter?

Find links to prototypes of Masses & Springs, Energy Skate Park, Build an Atom, Concentration and Faraday’s Electromagnetic Lab in HTML 5. We’re excited to be offering a sneak peek at our progress. Have fun!

If you didn’t receive the newsletter in your e-mail and want future newsletters, sign up at our website.

Don’t forget PhET this holiday season. Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.
Now through the secure Network for Good.

Thanks Noah and Laura for catching an issue with the new Forces and Motion.

Just a day after we released an update, they quickly e-mailed us regarding the number of significant digits in some of the numerical readouts. PhET Developers Sam Reid, John Blanco and Chris Malley worked together to isolate and solve the problem, posting a fixed version the next day. And, we found that the “bug” also affected three other simulations, all of which have been fixed.

Thanks for reporting problems to phethelp@colorado.edu so we can get things fixed quickly!

Help support PhET developers. Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

Last Spring in Montreal, Prof. Mike Dubson gave this talk on PhET Simulations: Student Engagement and Learning. The talk is presented in five parts of six minutes each. Thanks Mike for sharing your talk!

Help support PhET Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

It’s “Giving Tuesday”. Please consider including PhET in your annual donations, and help increase science and math literacy in your school and around the world. Support PhET: Donate today. 

Here’s a photo of PhET reaching students in Burundi.

With her background in math, Karina will be focusing on building our math simulation suite. For her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Florida, she studied “the instructional practices of math teachers who were successful with traditionally underperforming students.” She has a particular interest in culture, issues of equity, and the education of marginalized students.

Karina was attracted to PhET because, as a project, it puts out quality, research-based products for teachers – for free. In her free time, Karina likes to cook healthy vegetarian foods that even carnivores can enjoy.

Help support PhET Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

If you’ve recently updated to Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8, you may have received the message:

“To open this Web Start application, you need to download
the Java Runtime Environment.”

That’s because Apple Java was removed during the latest update. So when you receive this message, click “More Info“, and you will be taken to the java.com website for Version 7 at http://www.java.com/en/download/help/mac_install.xml.
Note: Once you’ve installed Java, you may need to reload or quit your browser in order to enable Java in your browser.

If you’re running Mountain Lion OS X 10.8, Gatekeeper (the new program introduced in OS X 10.8 designed to prevent potentially malicious apps from launching) may block the launch of the PhET sim. To override this, either modify Gatekeeper’s default settings or explicitly right/control-click the application and choose Open.

If you have additional questions, please e-mail phethelp@colorado.edu.

Help support PhET Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

Dear Fellow Educators, Administrators, Education Resource Providers,

We need your help!

To help us secure future funding to advance our work and keep PhET free, and to make the site as useful as possible for you, we need to know more about how, where, and why you use PhET in your teaching, and how you see the simulations influencing your students’ learning. We also want your input on future directions for the PhET project.

We are seeking very broad representation, so please forward this invitation to any educators you know.

If you are …

K12 Teacher who teaches with PhET:
https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5z4mrcuB1JwW9mZ

College Faculty who teaches with PhET:
https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_a9TLQpQd0cRB6fz

Use PhET in your education work or product (but not in teaching K12 or college):
https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5bEt1hYhrHhUIFT

Familiar with PhET, but do NOT USE PhET in your work:
https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_e34gOkbneq7q0M5

If any of these links don’t work, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/phetsurvey
Or copy and paste one of the URLs above into your internet browser.

Your participation is entirely voluntary, and your individual responses to this survey will be confidential. If you would like your institution to appear on a list or map of PhET users, you will have an opportunity to provide permission.

The survey results will be compiled to help improve PhET. Only aggregated results or anonymous statements will be used in any publications or reports, be disseminated on our website, or used in presentations to funders, educators, or researchers.

Thank you for your time and feedback!

Your PhET Team,
Kathy Perkins, Kathy Dessau, Noah Podolefsky, Mike Dubson, Robert Parson, Trish Loeblein, Noah Finkelstein, Emily Moore, Ariel Paul, Julia Chamberlain, Karina Hensberry, John Blanco, Jon Olson, Chris Malley, Sam Reid, Sam McKagan, Danny Rehn, Jesse Garrison, Linda Wellmann, and Oliver Nix

Teachers, join us for a free webinar on how to make the most of PhET simulations. Sponsored by Oregon Virtual School District, the webinar is free and open to everyone.

Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Time: 7 pm, Pacific Standard Time
Meeting Number: 926 149 315

For more information or to join the online meeting, go to
https://oregoned.webex.com/oregoned/j.php?ED=208783882&UID=496662807&RT=MiM0

Help keep new webinars coming: Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

We’re excited to add another simulation to our Basics series, designed specifically with middle-school students in mind.

With the new Forces and Motion: Basics simulation, explore the forces at work in a tug of war or by pushing a refrigerator, crate, or person. Create an applied force and see how it makes objects move. Change friction and see how it affects the motion of objects.

Help keep new sims coming: Donate to PhET’s Annual Campaign today.

Have you seen our special 10th Anniversary October 2012 newsletter?

In it, you’ll find all the latest news on new simulations, upcoming events and what’s to come, along with a special interview of Founder and Nobel Laureate, Carl Wieman. Read about how and why he started PhET.

If you didn’t receive it in your e-mail and want future newsletters, sign up at our website.