Fidget with applets

A wonderful resource I often utilize with my students is a website called simbucket.  They have a lot of interactive applets (called simulations) and videos that are great for communicating an idea another way.  Sometimes it’s hard for a student to picture what’s happening, understand how or why things interact, or a major idea if they cannot see/feel/hear it directly.  The applets help make ideas simpler to see, interact with, and understand. From the home page, you can search for material by subject (tabs just below on the right), or click the simulations tab and browse the many interactive applets available.

You could spend a lot of time investigating what is on this website and how you could use it, but I want to quickly point out two (of many) that have been useful to me.  When we talk about lenses and mirrors, that may seem like something students are familiar with and can interact with, but there are actually so many cases, situations, and zones to consider, that it’s very hard for them to see possibilities of each.  Using their lens and mirror applet allows students to see each of these cases, change the setup, and see how the construction of an image changes live.  It helps students see patterns and understand situations much better.

The other applet I find very helpful is for circuits and electricity.  Circuits are visible, but electricity and how it works is invisible, and if you do something wrong, you can have a bad interaction.  The DC circuit builder applet allows students to build different types of circuits, see what works and what doesn’t, what positive or negative effects changes can make, and why.  Again, turning something invisible, dangerous, and probably confusing, into something understandable.