102 interactive 3D STEM simulations

Forces and motion (12)

• Bouncing Balls: Drop a rubber ball from 30 cm. How high does it come back?
• Bungee Toy: Hang a toy on a big spring and let go. Does a heavier toy bounce faster or slower?
• Crashing Carts: Two carts crash on a track. Where does the push go?
• Double Pendulum Twins: Release two double pendulums almost exactly the same. How long do they stay twins?
• Friction Drag Test: Pull a block with a newton meter. How hard do you have to pull on ice, wood or sandpaper?
• Projectile Launcher: Aim the launcher and fire a marble. Which angle sends it furthest?
• Pulleys and a Newton Meter: Lift a brass weight with one wheel, then with more. How hard do you have to pull?
• Rolling Race: Race a ball, a cylinder, a hoop and a hollow ball down a ramp. Which one wins?
• Roundabout Ride: Spin the roundabout. How hard must the spring pull to keep the toy going round?
• Ruler See-saw: Hang brass weights on a ruler. Can a light weight far out balance a heavy one close in?
• Simple Pendulum: Time one swing. What changes it: the string, the bob, or the push?
• Slide and Light Gates: Let a toy sled slide down a slide. How fast does it pick up speed?

Waves and sound (10)

• Beat Frequency: Two nearly equal notes together go loud, soft, loud, soft. How fast is the wobble?
• Diffraction Patterns: Ripples squeeze through a gap. Do they fan out or go straight?
• Doppler Effect: A moving dipper squashes its ripples in front and stretches them behind.
• Resonance: Shake three toys on springs gently. Why does only one go wild?
• Sonar & Echolocation: Ping the water and listen. How long until the rock answers?
• Sound Waves: A speaker squeezes the air. Watch the squeezes march across the stage.
• Standing Waves: Buzz a cord at just the right rate and it splits into still points and big loops.
• Wave Interference: Two dippers, one duck. Where do the waves add up, and where do they cancel?
• Wave Motion: Shake one end of a cord. How fast does the wave run, and how long is each wave?
• Wave Reflection: Ripples hit a tilted wall. Which way do they bounce?

Light (6)

• Bending Light: Shine a ray into a glass block. How much does it bend?
• Candle, Lens and Screen: Slide the screen until the candle is sharp. Why is its picture upside down?
• Glowing Glass Rod: Shine a laser into a bent glass rod. Does the light follow the bend?
• Prism Rainbow: Split white light into a rainbow with a glass prism.
• Rainbow and Beyond: Slide from ultraviolet through the rainbow to infrared. Which light makes the star glow?
• Sunglasses Test: Two polarising filters, one lamp. Turn one filter: where does the light go?

Electricity and magnetism (9)

• Bike Dynamo: Pedal a bike on a stand. How does turning a magnet light the lamp?
• Charge the Flash: Fill a capacitor from a battery. Why does the light start bright and then fade?
• Electric Fields: Charge a metal ball and hang a tiny pith ball beside it. How far does the invisible push move it?
• Magnet Drop: Drop a magnet through a coil of wire. Can a falling magnet make electricity?
• Magnet and Compasses: Slide a magnet and compasses round a desk. Which way do the needles point, and why does a far one wobble slowly?
• Power to the Town: Change the turns on a transformer. Can you make the street lamps brighter, or blow them?
• Scrapyard Crane: Switch on the crane magnet. How many cans can it grab, and how do you make it stronger?
• Simple Circuits: Close the switch. What makes the bulbs brighter: more volts, fewer bulbs, or a different wiring?
• Storm over the Town: Where will the lightning strike? Watch it feel its way down, then add a lightning rod.

Space (10)

• Black Holes: Shine light past a black hole: does it bend, or fall in for ever?
• Comet Orbits: Why does a comet grow a tail near the Sun, and why does it rush past so fast?
• Earth's Seasons: Carry the globe round the lamp. Why is summer long and winter short?
• Galaxy Formation: A spinning cloud of stars and gas pulls itself together. Ball or plate?
• Moon Phases: A lamp, a globe and a Moon on real gravity: why does the Moon change shape?
• Ocean Tides: Why does the sea come in and go out twice a day?
• Orbital Mechanics: Newton's cannonball: how fast must you fire it sideways so it never lands?
• Solar & Lunar Eclipses: Line up the lamp, the globe and the Moon: why is there not an eclipse every month?
• Solar System: A desk orrery run by real gravity: why does Mars take longer than Earth to go round?
• Star Life Cycle: Heavy stars have more fuel. So why do they die young?

Earth and weather (10)

• Earthquake Waves: Two kinds of wave race through the Earth. How do they tell us where a quake was, and what is inside?
• Erosion: Pour water on a slope of sand: where does the sand go?
• Greenhouse Effect: How does a little CO₂ in the air keep the whole planet warmer?
• Ocean Currents: Ice at one end, warmth at the other: how does a whole ocean start to move?
• Plate Tectonics: The ground moves as fast as your fingernails grow. What does that do in a million years?
• Rock Cycle: Follow a grain of rock: worn away, buried, cooked, melted and born again.
• Tornado Formation: Why does air spin faster and faster as it rushes into a tornado?
• Volcanic Eruption: Why do some volcanoes pour out rivers of lava, and others explode?
• Water Cycle: The Sun lifts water out of the sea. Where does it go, and how does it get back?
• Weather Patterns: Why does wind swirl round a storm instead of blowing straight in?

Chemistry (15)

• Atomic Orbitals: Where is the electron? Look for it again and again, and a shape appears.
• Chemical Reactions: Molecules must crash hard enough to react. What makes that happen more often?
• Combustion: Put a jar over a candle. Why does the flame go out, and when?
• Crystal Growth: Grow a salt crystal on a thread: why does it come out as a neat cube?
• Diffusion: A drop of dye in still jelly: how does it spread with nothing stirring it?
• Electrolysis: Split water into hydrogen and oxygen with a battery. Which gas do you get more of?
• Enzyme Activity: Enzymes speed up reactions. Why do they stop working when it gets too hot?
• Gas Laws: Squash a gas with a piston, or heat it: how does its volume change?
• Molecular Bonding: What holds two atoms together, and how hard do you have to shake them to break it?
• Polymer Chains: Plastics are long chains of small molecules. Why does a chain curl up, and why is it stretchy?
• Radioactive Decay: Unstable atoms break down at random. How can we still say when half of them will be gone?
• Redox Reactions: Two metals and two solutions make a battery. Where do the electrons come from?
• Solutions: How much can you dissolve in a glass of water, and does warming it help?
• States of Matter: Solid, liquid, gas: the same molecules, just jiggling harder.
• pH Scale: Drip acid or alkali into water and watch the colour: how much does each drop change it?

Biology (15)

• Cell Division: One cell becomes two. How does each new cell end up with a full set of chromosomes?
• Cellular Respiration: Living things get energy from food. Does it make a difference whether they have oxygen?
• DNA Replication: Before a cell divides it copies all its DNA. How does it copy it so well?
• Ecosystem Balance: Can plants and animals live for weeks in a sealed jar? Where does their oxygen come from?
• Food Web: Who eats whom in a meadow? Take one species away and see what happens to the rest.
• Genetic Inheritance: Two purple-flowered plants can have white-flowered babies. How?
• Heart & Circulation: Your heart beats about 100,000 times a day. How does a squeeze become blood pressure?
• Immune Response: Bacteria get into a cut. How does your body find them and fight back?
• Muscle Contraction: Your biceps bends your arm. How hard does it really have to pull to lift a dumbbell?
• Natural Selection: Why do living things fit where they live so well? Watch hungry birds change a moth population.
• Neuron Signals: Nerves carry messages from your toes to your brain. How does a signal travel along a nerve?
• Osmosis: Water moves through a thin skin towards the sugary side. Can it push itself uphill?
• Photosynthesis: Plants make their food from light, water and carbon dioxide. Can we see it happening?
• Population Dynamics: One plant becomes two, two become four… Can a population keep doubling for ever?
• Protein Folding: A protein is a long chain. How does it fold itself into exactly the right shape?

Ecology (5)

• Biodiversity Index: How do ecologists measure how varied a meadow is? Throw some quadrats and count.
• Carbon Cycle: When we burn fuel, where does the carbon go? And how much of it stays in the air?
• Ecological Succession: Bare rock can become a forest. What grows first, and how does each stage make way for the next?
• Nitrogen Cycle: Air is mostly nitrogen, yet crops run short of it. How does nitrogen get into plants, and where does it go?
• Predator-Prey Dynamics: Why do hare and lynx numbers boom and crash again and again?

Maths (5)

• Chaos Theory: Two waterwheels start almost exactly the same. How long until they do something completely different?
• Fibonacci Spiral: Count the spirals in a sunflower and you find 21, 34, 55… Why does a flower know these numbers?
• Fractals: One simple rule, repeated, grows a whole tree. How many twigs does it make, and how much space does it fill?
• Graph Networks: How many steps apart are any two people? Why can a rumour reach everyone so fast?
• Probability: Each bounce is a coin toss. Why do a hundred balls always pile up into the same shape?

Engineering (5)

• Aerodynamics: Blow air over a wing. How fast before it lifts its own weight?
• Bridge Stress: How can a bridge of thin sticks hold a heavy load? Which sticks are pulled, and which are squashed?
• Gear Mechanisms: Big gear, small gear: which one turns faster, and why?
• Heat Transfer: Bridge hot water and cold with a metal bar. Which metal carries heat best?
• Hydraulics: Push a little piston gently. Can the oil lift a heavy crate?

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