See also Astronomy Applets

In this page you find a tree of the main topics of Physics. For every topic there is a list of references about the most interesting applets available. This applets are interactive simulations and a student can experiment what happens if....

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Physics
- Mechanics
  - Forces
    - Walking the tightrope Students are shown a simulation of a person (essentially: weight) balancing on a tightrope. Gravity is causes a number of forces in the structure of ropes and posts. Several variables can be manipulated. On the basis of the simulation, students are asked to reason about the forces in a structure.
      Paul Bergervoet, paul@fi.ruu.nl
    - Equations of motion Forces and related movements.
      Sadahisa Kamikawa , kamikawa@vir.bekkoame.or.jp
  - Gravitation
    - Projectile Motion A Java Applet from the University in Toronto demonstrating the motion of a projectile subject to gravitation and air friction. The user may set launch angle, friction and initial velocity. The total time, max hight, position at top and the range is measured and viewed.
      Authors of Toronto University
    - Kepler motion Initial condition of the "virtual star" is represented by an arrow. It can be dragged to change the initial position and initial velocity. Parameters (total energy, gravitation potential, effective potential, semimajor axis ...) are viewed graphically. The period is calculated in real time unit.
      Fu-Kwun Hwang
    - Orbit Simulator A java orbit simulator. You can use the mouse to move the satellite into different orbital heights and see the effect on orbital period.
      Kelly Jo Brown
  - Waves
    - String Plucker This interactive applet demonstrates the time-evolution of a plucked vibrating string. The mouse is used to "pluck" the string, which is subsequently released. The user can choose the number of Fourier components used to model the vibration, and also whether a single time-snapshot or a multi-snapshot time evolution is displayed.
      Michel Gallant, mig@magi.com
- Thermodynamics
  - Ideal Gas
    - Molecular Model for an Ideal Gas This java applet shows a microscopic model for an ideal gas.
      Fu-Kwun Hwang
- Optics
  - Refraction
    - Optics and Lenses Java Applet that demonstrates properties of lenses. An object or the lense can be dragged and dropped and the focus length of the lense can be varied. Real and virtual images, parameters and traces are viewed graphically.
      Fu-Kwun Hwang
    - Physics of rainbow The most charming example of chromatic dispersion is a rainbow. When white sunlight is intercepted by a drop of water in the atmosphere. Some of the light refracts into the drop, reflects from the drop's inner surface, and then refracts out of the drop. As with the prism, the first refraction separates the sunlight into its component colors, and the second refraction increases the separation. And the rainbow is there in the sky. This applet shows the physics of rainbow.
      Fu-Kwun Hwang
  - Interference
    - Young's Double Slit Interference This is a classic example of interference effects in light waves. Two light rays pass through two slits, separated by a distance d and strike a screen a distance, L, from the slits. You can change this parameters (drag scrollbars to do it) and you will see the result of interference on the screen.
      Serge Vtorov, vsg@myself.com
- Electromagnetism
  - Ohm's Law
    - The Virtual Lightbulb In this experiment the student is supposed to determine the relation ship between voltage (V), amperage (I) and resistance (R), i.e. to find out about Ohm's law.
      Authors of Oregon University
  - Lorentz Force
    - Charged particle motion This java applet shows motion of a charged particle in an uniform and constant electro-magnetic field.
      Fu-Kwun Hwang