Kinetic Books' computer-based labs are designed to take 60 to 90 minutes, during which time the students complete 6 to 10 exercises that consist of:

• An explanation of the necessary physics, including equations that must be used. Students may use the provided equations to derive others to accomplish particular goals.
• Detailed operational instructions on how to conduct the simulated laboratory activities.
• Simulations in which students can vary parameters to accomplish a particular goal or simply observe physical phenomena.
• Questions that ask the student to make hypotheses, record data, explain the data or justify their solution.

You can find a summary of all the labs by clicking here.

All of the labs include experimentation and data gathering. Some challenge the students to accomplish particular missions (for example, put a satellite in areosynchronous orbit). Others focus mainly on data gathering and analysis.

We will walk you through an example of each type of lab. The cannon lab is one in which the students are challenged to apply their physics skills to accomplish a goal. The ideal gas lab focuses on data gathering and analysis.

The Cannon Lab

In the cannon lab, the students start by dropping a cannonball and using a timer in the simulation to determine how tall a tower is. The standard motion equations are all presented so that students must choose which one to use to do the calculation.

In the next exercise, they can fire the cannonball with a horizontal velocity they set. Before they fire the cannon, they are asked the question, "Will the cannonball take more time to land if it is fired with a greater horizontal velocity?" They then fire the cannon as often as they want, noting the time it takes to land.

In the third exercise, students are presented with a target at a known horizontal distance from the cannon. Can they strike the target? Yes! They have the tools - the horizontal distance (displacement) divided by the elapsed time. They surprise themselves. In the fourth exercise, they then play an artillery game against the computer or a classmate. This is fun, but trial and error does not succeed as a strategy.

The second half of the lab explores the vertical component of projectile motion. This starts with students firing a cannonball vertically. They are challenged to "resupply" a cannon on top of a tower by causing the cannonball to have zero velocity at the top of the tower. In another exercise they fire the cannon, using x and y velocity components and are asked to determine how long it takes the cannonball to reach the peak of its motion. One of the features of the simulation is that output gauges show the x and y components of velocity and acceleration separately, and students can control the projectile using these components as well.

Next, they use their skills to play another artillery game, with their opponent being a classmate or the computer. It is fun to watch the "high fives" when a team succeeds! Later exercises also require them to use speed and angle to aim the cannon, and as an optional exercise they are asked to derive the range equation. They can test their equation using the simulation.

There are many goal-oriented labs akin to the cannon lab: a juggling lab (also on projectile motion, but for pacifists); two labs on orbital mechanics; a lab on Snell's law; a one-dimensional motion lab (skeet ball); a lab about uniform circular motion (the students drive a racecar); a lab where students learn how to create a stringed instrument while developing their knowledge of wave superposition and standing waves; and others.

Labs like these challenge students to use their physics skills to solve problems by driving a racecar at maximum speed around a corner, or tuning a string to contribute to the playing of a song, or docking a spacecraft. Students enjoy their successes and receive immediate feedback if they have erred.

The Ideal Gas Lab

The ideal gas lab is about gathering and analyzing data. It takes advantage of the ability of a computer to simulate the motion of particles. Students can see individual gas particles move. Of course, these are larger, slower and less numerous than those constituting a true ideal gas!

The lab starts with a perhaps unexpected topic: Maxwell's distribution curve. The students see a container that holds eight particles. They are told that the particles all start with the same speed but will move in randomly generated directions. They are asked, "Once the particles are allowed to start moving and they start to collide with one another, will they continue to move at the same speed?" The students then see the results, complete with the speed of each particle shown in a separate output gauge. In addition to seeing the variety of speeds that rapidly ensues, they can calculate the average kinetic energy of the gas at different times by averaging the kinetic energy of the eight particles.

In the second exercise, the configuration is similar, but this time there are 50 particles and the results are graphed in real time as a histogram that approximates the Maxwell curve over time. The "tail" of the distribution curve emerges as the simulation runs. There is a brief discussion of the significance of the tail.

The lab then moves on to the study of the ideal gas law. The students use a chamber filled with gas. They can change the temperature (speed) of the gas particles, the volume and the number of particles within the chamber.

The students see the particles striking the container wall and "see" how their gas property specifications affect the collisions with the wall and the pressure the wall exerts on the gas. They also record and graph the data in each case. At the end, they are asked to use their data to formulate the ideal gas law, complete with the constant.

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