PhET Blog

Meet Yuen-ying Carpenter who came to the PhET team with a PhD in chemistry, and an avid interest in investigating how college students learn in both core chemistry classes and in applied disciplines such as the energy sciences.

She brings with her both inquiry-based college curriculum development expertise from her time at the University of Calgary and Dalhousie University, as well as a taste for in informal science inquiry and outreach for all ages from the Calgary science centre, TELUS Spark.

When she’s not at PhET, Yuen-ying can be found biking around Boulder, or hanging out on a trapeze somewhere 10 ft in the air.

With the new #HTML5 Reactants, Products and Leftovers, you can create your own sandwich and then see how many sandwiches you can make with different amounts of ingredients. Do the same with chemical reactions, relating how making sandwiches is to chemical reactions. Then play a game to test your understanding of reactants, products and leftovers.

To give you an idea of what it takes to repurpose an #HTML5 sim, a simple sim (only one tab, such as Balloons and Static Electricity) takes at least several months and a team of 3-4 people, from start to testing to launch. With each sim, we

• modernize the look and feel
• address any issues/suggestions
• re-design the layout and interface for cross-platform (both mouse and touch) use–e.g., ensure a hand doesn’t block essential functions during touch usage, redesign all “right-click” functions, etc.

While we have over 50,000 lines of common code to build our JAVA simulations (things like rulers, sliders, buttons and control panels), we started with zero HTML5. Your generosity supports our building an ever-growing library and many more new #HTML5 sims to come.

Thank You for Your Support!

Have you seen our latest video, Facilitating Activities with PhET: An Overview? This video gives an overview of strategies for effective facilitation of K12 activities using PhET. Hear about some examples from fellow teachers. Should students play with PhET before discussions? How do you address questions about the simulation? How do you enable students to explore on their own?

We’re excited to announce that we are one of two overall winners of the Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education. PhET, along with PaGamO, the world’s first multi-student social game, shared the honor and a $50,000 prize. Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), publisher of the QS World University Rankings, developed the global Wharton-QS Stars competition to identify the most innovative approaches in higher education to enhance learning and student employability in partnership with The Wharton School SEI Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The global competition received submissions from 427 universities and enterprises from 43 countries with 21 awards judged by a panel of 25 international experts – a who’s who of higher education.

Thanks everyone who has supported PhET!
We couldn’t have won without you.

Have you seen our new home page? Simulations are easier to find with the large blue “Play” button. And, social media, informative You-Tube videos and newly added Pinterest buttons are now available on the right-hand side of every page.

Happy 2015 New Year!

A big ‘Thank You!’ to all of you who have already contributed to PhET during our 2014 Annual Giving Campaign.

If you considered donating, but haven’t gotten to it yet, there’s still time.

Please help support PhET with a donation to our Annual Giving Campaign. Together, we have impacted millions of students, with over 75 million sim runs in 2014 across 200 countries and territories. And at a complete project cost of only 2 cents per sim run. Your donation now will fuel our 2015 HTML5 sim conversions.

Every dollar really does help.

Whether you’re an educator, parent, student, STEM supporter or a company, consider sponsoring 500, 2500, or more sim runs with a donation of $10, $50, or more.

Donate Today: http://phet.colorado.edu/donate

Thank you and Happy New Year.

From our family to yours, we wish you all a Happy Holiday and New Year!

We are so excited to have online #HTML5 Energy Skate Park: Basics! Help bring more #HTML5 sims with a donation to PhET’s Annual Campaign. Any amount helps!

Donate Today

Thank you.
And, Happy Holidays and New Year!

Your PhET Team,
Dr. Kathy Perkins, Director and Dr. Kathy Dessau, Assistant Director
along with Aaron, Amanda, Amy, Ariel, Arnab, Beth, Bryan, Carl, Chris, Emily M., Emily R., Jesse, John, Jonathan, Karina, Liam, Linda, Matthew, Mike, Noah, Oliver O., Oliver N., Robert, Yuen-ying, Sam M., Sam R., Steele, Stephanie, and Trish

We’ve joined with Science Friday to offer a great new Teaching Activity “Simulate Net Forces to Predict an Object’s Motion” with our Forces and Motion: Basics sim.

Thanks Science Friday!