Creating Virtual Machines – Connect Charter School

Creating Virtual Machines

Our grade 8 Science students are just starting on a project building digital Goldberg machines. To accomplish this, the students will be using an application called Phun, which is a free, 2D physics simulator.

Phun allows students to digitally build and combine a variety of objects including gears, wheels, springs, etc and to control different variable including gravity, wind speed, density of objects, etc.
By using Phun, we are asking the students will be able to create something like this in order to demonstrate their understanding of simple machines.
Here is the initial planning document for the unit, including a rubric and the desired student outcomes.

1 comment

  1. You should have a look at Marker Man on the Nintendo DS – better for the grade 5 simple machines unit, but great physics based problem solving – games based learning style

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