PEDAGOGY

To help students engage in science and mathematics through inquiry, PhET simulations are developed using the following design principles:

• Encourage scientific inquiry
• Provide interactivity
• Make the invisible visible
• Show visual mental models
• Include multiple representations (e.g., object motion, graphs, numbers, etc.)
• Use real-world connections
• Give users implicit guidance (e.g., by limiting controls) in productive exploration
• Create a simulation that can be flexibly used in many educational situations

INTERACTIVITY

Several tools in the simulations provide an interactive experience:

• Click and drag to interact with simulation features
• Use sliders to increase and decrease parameters
• Choose between options with radio buttons
• Make measurements in your experiments with various instruments – rulers, stop-watches, voltmeters, and thermometers.

As users interact with these tools, they get immediate feedback about the effect of the changes they made. This allows them to investigate cause-and-effect relationships and answer scientific questions through exploration of the simulation.

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder provides over 130 free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.