Wiggle wrench

Sunday 25 January 2015

GeoGebra is excellent at showing the maths behind relatively simple examples but once you start adding friction, air resistance, damping etc. the maths becomes too complex. Algodoo does the maths leaving you to play with the variables. Here I have tried to simulate a wave in a stretched string. The horizontal piston was an attempt to control the tension by varying the properties of the spring. Not entirely successful. PhET do a superb animation that works much better but doesn't give so much control and the variables such as tension and mass per unit length are hidden. students always laugh when "wiggle wrench" instruction appears.

This combined with some real experiments with strings could result in an excellent investigation.


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