14 May 2015
If you fell down a hole which went all the way through the centre of the earth to the other side, where would you end up?
In Stage 2 Science, students have been learning about forces, motion, gravity and all sort of fascinating physical phenomena. Many of their investigations involve hands-on experiments, but some questions, such as the one posed above, are very difficult to investigate live. This is where computer simulations can be handy.
Algodoo is an excellent and fully featured piece of software which allows all sorts of physical phenomena to be setup, played with, and investigated. Students can turn on and off friction and gravity to investigate how these forces affect daily motion; they can make changes to just one variable and repeat an experiment over and over again, practising their fair-testing; and they can take screen shots, photos or video clips of their experiments to prove their findings to others.
Best of all, Algodoo is free for Mac and PC. There is also a paid iPad version which is available through the iPad App Store. Go to www.algodoo.com to download it today!
Oh, and want to investigate the answer to the question? Download this simulation and run it in Algodoo to find out!