PhET Progress Report

Sam Reid

March 29, 2007

 

An online version of this report is available here.

Here’s a pie chart representation of the time distribution.

 

Energy Skate Park

Latest version is http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/dev/ec3/1.05.11/

·         Bugfix in Jet pack graphics

·         Skater points at track while dragging

·         Physics

o   Added friction

o   Added thrust

o   Added normal force computation

§  Including infinite curvature case

o   Energy conservation

§  During friction case

§  During track attachment

·         Code cleanup

o   Integrate new physics into main codebase

o   Remove lots of unused code

o   Reorganize new codebase

 

Piccolo component (PSwing)

  • Collaborated with John on some initial feasibility tests
  • Designed, implemented, tested simplified construction for PSwing

 

Phetcommon

  •  Collaborated with John to simplify/standardize sim internationalization.

 

Developer Meeting

·         Sim internationalization

·         Piccolo

·         Phetcommon organization & future

 

Piccolo

·         Email to piccolo team to request information about their future.

·         Piccolo team no longer has official (or financial support), but continues to provide support.  Also has expressed an interest in opening up administrative privileges to the community.

 

Upcoming Work

  1. Energy Skate Park

a.       Meet with team for discussion of issues.

b.      Integrate new physics model into full simulation

·         Most of the big things are done, lots of little things remain.

  1. Rotational Motion Simulation I/II

3.      CCK…

 

Energy skate park todo’s:

 

Meet with energy skate park team for discussion of features

 

• Show an indicator for attachment point during skater dragging?

• Performance problems after lots of runs

• memory leak in EnergySkateParkSplineListAdapter

• Playback/record (depends on correct data structure copying which needs to be implemented and tested)

• Add rotation for skater in the air?

• Add visualization for force diagram (or just normal force?)

• With high enough speed, sometimes the skater can pass through a track (or ground)

• Skater should point at track while dragging: Unpredictable behavior when there are 2+ possible matches.

• Energy conservation is handling about 6/8 (?) cases correctly, there are still a few instances in which it could fail.

criteria are (with, without friction)x(too much proposed energy, too little proposed energy)x(gravity on, off).

Depending on the effectiveness of patches, other patches are tested.

Also during track attachment and release

• Behavior on landing on flat surface is different (no sideways motion)

• Track should bump up when beneath ground