2D Physics Simulations using Processing IDE for Physics Education Research - Workshop 2018

The planned code and the code that was used during the workshop for the project "Programming in physics education" and "Programming as a means for meaning-making in physics education" at Lund University, The National Resource Centre for Physics Education. Used during the 2018 data collection session by PhD student Kim Svensson. The work was performed in Sweden, using interested swedish students.

The different sessions needs to be unpacked using any unpacking software. The code within each session needs the Processing IDE, https://processing.org/, with the python module to run.

The code was coded live with the students and was used to study students interaction with programming in a physics context with the aim to discover how programming could improve the understanding of different physical concepts, such as: the relationship between position, velocity and acceleration, or the relationship between force and acceleration, but also different models of systems using Hooke's Law or Newtons Law of Gravity.

Session 01 aimed to introduce them to programming and how to make things move on the screen using variables for position, velocity and acceleration.

Session 02 took the ideas from session 01 and constructed a particle-class to be used as the base for future simulations.

Session 03 implemented a hanging cloth simulation based on the ideas from the students. It focused on finding the correct interaction between particles that would produce the desired results.

Session 04 had the students come up with, and implement their own heat-diffusion simulation and visualise it on the screen. The simulation was based on the grid-structure that emerged in session 03.

Session 05 focused on interviews by Kim Svensson and the students could choose to do different programming assignments when they were not being interviewed.