Introduction to Physlet Illustrations

 

 

Interactive Help
on      off
Physlets illustrations will be used as a part of this Study Guide to help you visualize and understand many of the physics concepts you have encountered in the text. Physlets can involve animations in which things change over time. Objects move, interact with each other, perhaps even collide. Often the Physlet will give you controls (like those found on a VCR) to start and stop, pause, or step through the animation. The illustration may also contain a grid to help you measure and keep track of the x and y coordinates of objects. It may have a clock display showing the time. However, the units for the display grid or the clock time will  always be specified in the text of the Physlet illustration. For example, the clock time here is in seconds and distances are in centimeters.

Things to Try

  1. Watch the two balls move across the screen. Practice using the VCR controls.
  2. Pause the animation, and then place your mouse cursor on top of one of the balls and press the mouse button. A small, yellow box appears in the animation to give you the x and y coordinates of the mouse.
  3. Can you find the location of the coordinate origin (0,0) in this illustration? What is the grid size?
  4. Using the VCR controls and reading the clock time, exactly when do the positions of the two balls coincide?
  5. Where are they located at that time?
  6. Now turn on the "Interactive Help". This may be used to give you additional information, clues or solutions to the problems posed in the Physlet illustration.

Reference

See Walker, Chapter 1

Illustration written by Steve Mellema