PhET Upcoming Work

Sam Reid

 

Simulation-Centric

 

CCK

 

Force1d

·        The wiggle me is too wordy,  annoying in class usage

·        The zoom in and out boxes cover the beginning of the graphs, so the students can't see what's happening right at the start. Could they be moved to the right hand side of the graphs?

  • java.awt.image.ImagingOpException: Unable to invert transform on startup
  • Mac: ComboBox contents are clipped, and I assume there are a bunch of missing sliders?, setOpaque false

 

The Ramp

·        See bug report

·        Put board color on the ground so the ground won’t seem to have different physics.

  • Mac: ComboBox contents are clipped, and I assume there are a bunch of missing sliders?, setOpaque false

 

Travoltage

  • Integrate 2nd person (checkbox)
    • Give electron a reference to the body it’s in, then can reuse all the collision code.
  • When they touch, charges should equally distribute.
  • Wendy=Travoltage team
  • Relationship between this & potential upcoming static electricity sim?
  • "When I first did John Travoltage, my computer loaded charges so fast that
    I couldn't see them migrating to the outside of his body.  When I slowed
    the simulation a bit, that was very clear.  As his body (and head) became
    covered with more and more charge, I asked the kids what his hair should
    be looking like at that point and they all realized it should be standing
    on end (as with a van der Graaf generator).  Wouldn't it be cool if the
    simulation could do that as well???

 

Wave Interference (from interview & meeting)

·        Awaiting feedback on recommendations for cube rotation.

  • In the ripple tanks I have students test different types of waves such as straight and circular waves.  I also have them test different types of barriers such as straight, curved and angled barriers.

 

Moving Man

  • A set of curves to be matched would be a good enhancement.  I would suggest the matches found in the Real Time and TST physics labs would be good ones to add.  But they need to cross over the zero on the position graph.  One of the matches needs to start the man by  default at a bad location.  See the RTP labs for the relevant match.

 

Energy Skate Park

 

Rotational Motion

  • Add Wendy to rotational motion sim list
  • Should be able to zoom out time..?  What should the default visible time frame be?  What about the max available time?
  • Should "Rotational Motion" be called "Rotating Woman"?

 

Semiconductors

  • If you put an N dopant on the right, and nothing on the left, with no voltage, some extra electrons flow in from the left and just sit there on the left.  See attached screenshot.  The same thing does NOT happen if you put an N dopant on the right instead of the right.

 

Ideal Gas

  • There is a flaw in the part of your simulation involving the piston that makes it difficult to use it to teach the first law. The speed of the piston and that of the molecules are the same order of  magnitude. When pushing the piston in you can transfer momentum to the gas molecules such that the external work raises the internal energy of your ideal gas. BUT, when you pull back on the piston, you can outrun the molecules and the gas doesn't cool. I don't know a good workaround since making it right would involve speeding up air molecules at room temp to an rms of about 400 m/s which the screen refresh and the student eye couldn't see or slowing down the retracting piston to a really tedius snail's pace.  --P

 

Media Licensing

·        Make sure there are no license violations for media (images & sounds) we have included in our software.

·        Call is in to California for Travoltage

·        Email is in to speaker graphics designer

·        Email is in to sweater copyright holder

·        Lots remains to be done

 

About Dialogs

·        Upgrade about dialogs for old sims?

 

License Info

·        Where to put this info on main page.

·        Careful not to inadvertently relicense libraries on which phet depends.

·        Sample license header

·        Carl will write a usage license for redistribution

·        I'll write a license for software usage

 

Mac Problems

·        Balloons & Static Electricity

·        Maze Game

·        Forces in 1D

·        The Ramp

·        Signal Circuit

·        Newer sims need to be mac-tested.

 

Testing

·        Investigate Abbott & other automated test suites for gui apps

 

Splash Screen

  • Sometimes throws an innocuous exception

 

Ask Wendy/Kathy about Alabama data?

 

 

Misc

 

 

I think I may have found a bug in Quantum Wave Interference.  I was just

playing around with it and it froze on me.  The conditions where it

froze were if I went to the Single Particles panel, and turned on the

double slit and turned off the absorbing barrier.   Every time I do this

(I have tried restarting the simulation several times), the photon

freezes before it hits the barrier.  I can still pause it and step

through until it gets past the barrier, and then press play, but the

next one does the same thing.  It's very repeatable on my computer, but

I don't know about others.

 

It has the same problem in high intensity mode.