Creating interactive animations for teaching science
Bekolay, Trevor1, Metz, Don2, Klassen, Stephen2, Martin, Brian3, Mahaffy, Peter3
Introduction
Scientists use models to understand the world around us.
Those models form the base of more complex concepts and
theories.
In today’s science education, there is a tendency for educators
to teach problem solving recipes for problem types, and for
students to learn those recipes by rote. The underlying
concepts, while plainly obvious to the expert, are not well
understood by the novice.
Rutherford scattering
The Rutherford scattering applets aim to
demonstrate and explain Rutherford’s
gold foil experiments, which first
observed an atom’s nucleus.
The first applet presents a historical
recreation of the Geiger-Marsden
experiment in which the existence of the
nucleus was first established. The applet
can be used to generate data for student
analysis.
Electricity
Roemer’s experiment
This applet closely examines a copper wire in four different situations dealing
with electricity. Each situation contributes to an overall understanding of the
underlying physical processes associated with electricity.
The first determination of the speed of light was made by Ole Roemer using
the motions of the moons of Jupiter. This applet simulates a simplified model
of Earth’s orbit around the sun, and Io’s orbit around Jupiter to assist a
student in making a rudimentary calculation of the speed of light.
The first frame shows
the copper wire at
equilibrium – that is,
with no charge running
through it.
Interactive animations aim to improve the conceptual
understanding of students by illustrating the models
underlying the problems they are learning to solve.
Materials and methods
The second frame shows
the copper wire with a
transient current. A
transient current exist only
briefly before the negative
and positive electric
potentials even out.
The interactive animations described here were created with
Adobe Flash CS3, using ActionScript 3. Some collaboration was
made possible with Adobe Dreamweaver.
Flash has the advantage of being inherently visual and crossplatform. Flash animations can be embedded in a website and
used on any platform with a Flash-capable web browser.
Kinematics
Applications
The third frame shows the
copper wire connected to a
constant source of charge, a
battery. The wire visibly
heats up as electrons move
through the wire and bump
into copper atoms.
These animations can be used in many different contexts:
1. As a pre-lab exercise.
2. As a replacement for a physical lab where equipment is too
expensive or dangerous.
3. As an augmentation to a lecture or lab exercise.
4. As a visualization of a concept or demonstration.
The fourth frame shows the
copper wire connected to a
strong source of charge, a
power supply. The wire
heats up and eventually
burns out.
Acknowledgments
1 Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba
2 CRYSTAL Manitoba, University of Winnipeg
3 King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (KCVS),
King’s University College, Edmonton
And the other members of KCVS:
David Dystra, Naomi Mahaffy, Ben Scott, Amanda Thompson,
and Kristen Tjostheim
TEMPLATE DESIGN © 2008
www.PosterPresentations.com
In this applet the user can investigate the behaviour of alpha
particles as they interact with various nuclei. Data can be
represented graphically or in tabular form for further analysis.