Watch alpha particles escape from a polonium nucleus, causing radioactive alpha decay. See how random decay times relate to the half life.
Create your own shapes using colorful blocks and explore the relationship between perimeter and area. Compare the area and perimeter of two shapes side-by-side. Challenge yourself in the game screen to build shapes or find the area of funky figures. Try to collect lots of stars!
Build rectangles of various sizes and relate multiplication to area. Discover new strategies for multiplying algebraic expressions. Use the game screen to test your multiplication and factoring skills!
Build rectangles of various sizes and relate multiplication to area. Partition a rectangle into two areas to discover the distributive property.
Build rectangles of various sizes and relate multiplication to area. Discover new strategies for multiplying large numbers. Use the game screen to test your problem solving strategies!
Explore the interactions between various combinations of two atoms. Turn on the force arrows to see either the total force acting on the atoms or the individual attractive and repulsive forces. Try the "Adjustable Attraction" atom to see how changing the parameters affects the interaction.
Experiment with a helium balloon, a hot air balloon, or a rigid sphere filled with different gases. Discover what makes some balloons float and others sink.
Why does a balloon stick to your sweater? Rub a balloon on a sweater, then let go of the balloon and it flies over and sticks to the sweater. View the charges in the sweater, balloons, and the wall.
Explore the origin of energy bands in crystals of atoms. The structure of these bands determines how materials conduct electricity.
Look inside a battery to see how it works. Select the battery voltage and little stick figures move charges from one end of the battery to the other. A voltmeter tells you the resulting battery voltage.
Watch beta decay occur for a collection of nuclei or for an individual nucleus.
Build fractions from shapes and numbers to earn stars in this fractions game or explore in the Fractions Lab. Challenge yourself on any level you like. Try to collect lots of stars!
When will objects float and when will they sink? Learn how buoyancy works with blocks. Arrows show the applied forces, and you can modify the properties of the blocks and the fluid.
Move point charges around on the playing field and then view the electric field, voltages, equipotential lines, and more. It's colorful, it's dynamic, it's free.
Experiment with conductivity in metals, plastics and photoconductors. See why metals conduct and plastics don't, and why some materials conduct only when you shine a flashlight on them.
Visualize the electrostatic force that two charges exert on each other. Observe how changing the sign and magnitude of the charges and the distance between them affects the electrostatic force.
With your mouse, drag data points and their error bars, and watch the best-fit polynomial curve update instantly. You choose the type of fit: linear, quadratic, cubic, or quartic. The reduced chi-square statistic shows you when the fit is good. Or you can try to find the best fit by manually adjusting fit parameters.
Why do objects like wood float in water? Does it depend on size? Create a custom object to explore the effects of mass and volume on density. Can you discover the relationship? Use the scale to measure the mass of an object, then hold the object under water to measure its volume. Can you identify all the mystery objects?
Play hockey with electric charges. Place charges on the ice, then hit start to try to get the puck in the goal. View the electric field. Trace the puck's motion. Make the game harder by placing walls in front of the goal. This is a clone of the popular simulation of the same name marketed by Physics Academic Software and written by Prof. Ruth Chabay of the Dept of Physics at North Carolina State University.
Learn about conservation of energy with a skater dude! Build tracks, ramps and jumps for the skater and view the kinetic energy, potential energy and friction as he moves. You can also take the skater to different planets or even space!