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phetsims / masses-and-springs

"Masses and Springs" is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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User suggestion: horizontal orientation #362

Open oliver-phet opened 4 years ago

oliver-phet commented 4 years ago

Could you do a horizontal version too? This could be used for an easier version of simple harmonic motion as we could ignore the gravitational potential energy. It would also need a horizontal ruler for making displacement measurements. Could you put a scale on the energy bars in arbitrary units? We could then investigate energy-displacement graphs for SHM.

arouinfar commented 3 years ago

We received another request for a horizontal system:

Let me start by saying THANKS! and I really love your simulations. I am currently teaching an 8th grade curriculum that uses some math concepts when teaching the "Physics" material. I was wondering if you would consider creating a HORIZONTAL "masses and springs" simulation with SHM but horizontal. It would need to include those great energy graphs. Removing gravitational PE would make it more accessible to younger students.

After being pointed to Hooke's Law, they followed up with:

It's great. I especially like the energy plot. However, it doesn't show simple harmonic oscillation with energy exchanges and friction. The simple energy exchange between elastic Potential and Kinetic Energy with and without friction would be great. Even a good AP physics problem about how many times will it oscillate before coming to rest, or calculate the coefficient of friction, etc.

Setting the gravity to none/zero would serve some of their learning goals, so I let them know about that option.