PhET Progress Report

Sam Reid

Sept 6, 2007

 

An online version of this report is available here.

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

 

IntelliJ Build File Creation

·         Worked with John to automatically generate project files from existing simulation specifications.  This is a task that used to take about 30 minutes each time it was done by hand, and was error-prone.

·         When we have a greater need for it, we should also add the ability to create project files for Eclipse

 

States of Matter

·         Worked with John to initialize project skeleton for States of Matter simulation

·         I’ll continue to work part-time with John on this simulation

 

Lasers

·         Latest version

·         Added ability to change photon speed for each module

·         Added frame rate display, and allows the user to set the requested time between clock ticks (go Options -> Profile):

·         Improved the performance of the 2nd panel by about 25%

·         Will have discussion with Wendy after today’s PhET meeting about these issues.

·         Perhaps the next way to improve performance for this sim would be to rewrite the graphics in piccolo (it looks like much of the simulation time is currently spent in the phet-graphics code).  However, this can be time consuming, and I'm not sure of the exact improvement it will yield.

 

Torque

·         Latest version

·         Minor bugfixes and improvements.

·         Improvement for utilities for getting simulation frame rate and controlling the clock, e.g. used in Lasers and Rotation sim.

·         Please see todo doc for outstanding issues and questions

 

Domain Specific Languages

·         Discussion with John and literature search about a possible technique for improving our simulation source code.

·         John, Chris and I will discuss this technique, and write feasibility tests to see whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.

 

Virtual Private Networking

·         Discussion with ITS to resolve my problems with VPN.

·         Eventually resolved the problem by formatting my hard drive and reinstalling the OS.

 

Moving Man

·         Posted minor revision to main site

 

Upcoming Work

·         Rotation/Torque

·         Collaborate with John on States-Of-Matter

·         Licensing issues/Meet with Kate Tallman

·         GUI for translation system

·         CCK