Virtual Physics for Chromebooks

Oltre Labz Virtual Labs, Real Science

Built over a Science SDK developed through 20 years of research at BYU, Beyond Labz creates open-ended virtual lab experiences that provide students with opportunities to experiment, practice, fail, discover and learn without the limitations, expense and safety constraints of an actual laboratory.

Virtual Physics has seven individual lab benches:

Mechanics

The purpose of the mechanics laboratory is to allow students the ability to experiment with and understand the concepts of forces, frictions, acceleration, and collisions and their effect on the motion of objects under controlled conditions.

Density

The density laboratory allows students the ability to measure the mass and volume of a large set of liquids and solids which, in turn, will allow them to explore the fundamental concepts governing density and buoyancy.

Optics

The optics laboratory gives students the freedom to discover and learn the principles associated with simple optical experiments involving light sources, objects, mirrors, lenses, prisms, and filters.

Circuits

The circuit laboratory gives students the freedom to discover and learn the principles associated with simple electrical circuits involving resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The laboratory allows students to build circuits using either a breadboard or schematic representation.

Quantum

The lab allows students to explore and understand the foundational experiments that led to the development of atomic theory. There is an optics table on which you place a source, sample, modifier, and detector combination to perform experiments. The devices are located in the stockroom and are taken out to place on the optics table. Students probe samples (e.g., a gas, metal foil, two-slit screen, etc.) with a source (e.g., a laser, electron gun, alpha-particle source, etc.) and detect the outcome with a specific detector (e.g., a phosphor screen, spectrometer, etc.). Heat, electric fields, or magnetic fields can also be applied.

Gas Properties

The lab contains four experiments, each has one dependent and three independent variables: pressure §, temperature (T), volume (V), and the number of moles (n). The experiments include an ideal gas; a van der Waals gas with parameters that can be changed to represent any real gas; real gases including N2, CO2, CH4, H2O, NH3, and He; and eight ideal gases with different molecular weights that can be added to the experiments to form gas mixtures.

Calorimetry

There is a classic “coffee cup”, a dewar flask, and a bomb calorimeter. The calorimetric method is based on measuring the temperature change associated with the different thermodynamic processes. Students can choose organic materials to measure the heats of combustion; salts to measure the heats of solution; acids, bases, oxidants, and reductants for heats of reaction; metals and alloys for heat capacity measurements; and ice for a melting process. Temperature versus time data can be graphed and saved to an e-lab book for analysis.

This app is designed for use on Chromebooks. For the best experience, a mouse will be required.