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phetsims / collision-lab

"Collision Lab" is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations.
GNU General Public License v3.0
6 stars 4 forks source link

User suggestion: "spheres" instead of "balls" #149

Closed oliver-phet closed 4 years ago

oliver-phet commented 4 years ago

Just one less thing to distract my high school students.

arouinfar commented 4 years ago

The code refers to the objects as balls (as did the Flash sim). Changing the string in the sim is trivial, but I really think it should be in sync with the code, which wouldn't be trivial to change.

We could try labelling the spinner with the singular "Ball" instead. It's grammatically weird, but has less baggage.

@ariel-phet what do you think?

arouinfar commented 4 years ago

We can also wait and see if other teachers have similar concerns.

ariel-phet commented 4 years ago

@oliver-phet ( and @arouinfar ) -- we are not going to take any action on this request.

When you do classic demonstrations of momentum you use various sorts of balls, pool balls, basketballs, golf balls, etc. In the sim these truly are considered balls.

Though this term has "baggage" the flash version was used for many many years without any obvious concerns.

@oliver-phet please let the user know that although we appreciate their suggestion we are going to remain with the original term. If you would prefer I would be happy to reply to them as well.

oliver-phet commented 4 years ago

Replied to user