Saturday, August 30, 2014

Drag Graph Checking

I previously posted about a class exercise where my AP C students pair up, pick two random objects, and try to draw qualitatively correct position, velocity, and acceleration graphs for them falling through the air. The idea is to get a qualitative feel for drag graphs and to check qualitative results for terminal velocities.

I had written a VPython script to do this, but it required my intervention to change the values each time, and everyone had to watch all of the graphs. I don't have enough students for that to be super-terrible, but I wanted a way for them to do it themselves.

Enter Glowscript; I've ported the VPython script to there (and made some improvements), and students can now check these graphs for themselves!

There's a screenshot below which links to the simulation - feel free to use it and drop me a line if you do! Definitely let me know if you find any bugs!