Welcome to this tutorial on Introduction to PhET simulations.
In this tutorial, we will learn- 1. To open PhET webpage, 2. About PhET simulation,
3. To register/Sign in on the page, 4. To browse activities, 5. To share your activities page, 6. About tips for using PhET,
7. About offline access, 8. To choose the simulations based on subject and grade level, 9. To download simulations of different file formats used in PhET,
10. To open the downloaded simulations.
To follow this tutorial, you should have internet connection.
Here, I am using: Ubuntu Linux OS version 14.04, Firefox web Browser version 53.02.2, Java version 1.7, Flash player version 26.0.0.131.
Files to download and Install: Flash Player and Java are provided in the code files link. Use the link to download and install the files.
Now let us open PhET simulations page.
Open your default web browser and enter the address: http://phet.colorado.edu and press Enter.
PhET interactive Simulations page opens.
Now, let us see how to register on the page. Click on the REGISTER button on the top-right corner of the page.
Register page opens.
Type the relevant data in appropriate fields/text boxes. For example, your valid Email id, First name, Organization and other details.
Click on REGISTER button at the bottom of the page. I have already registered on this page.
To confirm the registration, open your Gmail account.
Click on the link sent by PhET Interactive simulations to activate the registration.
After you have registered, you can sign in.
Click on SIGN IN button, beside REGISTER button, at the top of the page.
Sign In by using your registered Email id and Password.
I will Sign In using my registered email id, school.science13@gmail.com.
Enter the password. Click on Sign In button.
Now let us click on the link What is PhET?.
A new page opens with a heading About PhET. This page has information about PhET.
Below this information, we have a short video about introduction to PhET simulations.
I will click on the play button and play the video for sometime.
On the right-side panel, Videos About PhET are listed. Click on the videos and watch them.
Back to the home page. Click on Browse Activities link. Browse Activities page opens.
Here, we have the following lists. Simulations, Types, Levels and Languages.
Scroll the lists and select based on your requirement.
In Simulations list, I will select Bending light.
In Types list, I will select Lab. In Levels, I will select high school, HS.
In Languages, I will select English.
Click on browse button. Activities related to the simulation will be displayed.
Select the activity by clicking on the TITLE. There is also an option to download the activity.
Go to the home page by clicking on the back arrow button. Click on Share your Activities link.
If you have already signed in, this page opens directly. Page opens with Author’s name, Author’s organization and Contact email.
In the Simulations box, choose the simulation for which you are going to upload the activity.
In Upload file(s) option, allowed file extension formats are listed.
Click on CHOOSE FILE button. File Upload dialog box opens.
Choose your file with allowed extension to upload. I have already filled in the relevant data.
Click on Licensing Agreement check box after reading the License agreement. Click on SUBMIT ACTIVITY button.
Update Success message appears. Let us go back to the home page. Click on the link Tips for Using PhET.
A new page opens with videos that explain how to use PhET simulations. You can explore these videos on your own.
Back to the home page of PhETs .
You can either click on play button or Play with Simulations link.
A simulations page opens.
On the left side of the page, you can see a heading called Simulations.
Under the heading, we have a list of links. New Sims, HTML5, Subject-wise Sims, By Grade Level, Teacher Resources and other links.
Here we can choose the appropriate links as per requirement.
Let us click on By Grade Level link.
A new page opens with four links: Elementary School, Middle School, High School and University.
Again choose the link as per your requirement. I will click on High School link.
All simulations that are under High School category are displayed on the new page.
To view all the available Sims, click on All Sims link. A new page opens with all the Sims.
Scroll down the page. Notice that we have Simulations in 3 different formats HTML, Java and Flash.
They are denoted by icons on the bottom-right corner of the simulation.
The simulations in HTML format are denoted by HTML5 icon, at the bottom-right corner of the window.
We can directly open HTML format and flash format simulations by clicking on them. Click on the play button. The simulation window opens .
We can work with the simulation till we are connected to Internet. Back to the previous page.
To download the simulation for off-line use, let us select Atomic Interactions PhET simulation.
Click on Download button to download the file.
Opening atomic-interactions_en.html file dialog box opens.
Select Save File radio button. Click on Ok button.
In my system, file will be downloaded to the Downloads folder.
Here is the downloaded HTML file of atomic-interactions simulation.
To open the simulation, right-click on the file. Choose the option Open With Firefox Web Browser. File opens in the browser.
This is the interface of atomic-interactions simulation. Click on various element radio buttons and explore the simulation.
Let us go to the simulations page.
Let's download a simulation that can be opened as Java file. For this, I will use the simulation Battery-Resistor Circuit.
To download the file, click on Download button.
Opening battery-resistor-circuit_en.jar file dialog box opens.
Select Save File radio button. Click on Ok button. File will be downloaded to the Downloads folder.
To work with a jar file, we require terminal in Ubuntu.
To open the terminal, press Ctrl , Alt and T keys simultaneously.
At the prompt, type: cd Downloads and press Enter.
Then type: java space hyphen jar space battery-resistor-circuit_en.jar and press Enter.
Battery-Resistor Circuit simulation opens. Do not close the terminal, it will kill the process. Click Cancel to continue.
Back to the previous page of PhETs.
Now we will download a simulation that can be opened using Flash reader.
For this, I will use Calculus Grapher simulation as an example.
For off-line use, download the simulation. After downloading, use terminal to open the simulation.
Click on the simulation. Calculus Grapher simulation opens with a player. Explore the simulation.
Back to the Home page of PhETs.
At the bottom of the page, click on OFFLINE ACCESS link.
You can see three options: 1.Desktop/Laptop Computer 2.Chrome book 3. iPad.
Click on Desktop/Laptop Computer option.
Here, again we have two installer options, Download installer with simulations only (no activities) and Download installer with simulations and activities.
I will choose the second installer option- Download installer with simulations and activities.
Depending on your operating system you can choose- Windows(includes Java), Mac OS X, Linux,
I am a linux user. So, I will use linux installer.
Opening PhET-Installer-with-activities_Linux.bin dialog box opens. Click on Save File button.
The file will be saved in the Downloads folder.
Downloading the files takes a few minutes. I have already downloaded the Linux installer file to my Downloads folder.
As an assignment: Explore the PhET interactive simulations webpage. Download and open simulations of different file formats.
Let us summarize. In this tutorial, we have learnt: 1. To open PhET webpage. 2. About PhET simulation, 3. To register/Sign in on the page,
4. To browse activities, 5. To share your activities page, 6. About tips for using PhET, 7. About offline access,
8. To choose the simulations based on subject and grade level,
9. To download simulations of different file formats used in PhET, 10. To open the downloaded simulations.
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