PhET Blog

Last week, as part of being a Tech Award laureate, the Tech Awards program made a video to help summarize the PhET project and some of its goals. Award-winning Hollywood director Sandy Smolan and his team produced the video. It’s only 90 seconds, so it doesn’t cover all aspects of PhET, but we like the final product! Thanks Sandy and team.

In addition, the Tech Museum has released this video showing the highlights of the black-tie gala and the Tech Awards laureates.

Try our new Sugar and Salt Solutions Sim to see what happens when sugar and salt are added to water. Pour in sugar, shake in salt, and evaporate water to see the effects on concentration and conductivity. Zoom in to see how different sugar and salt compounds dissolve. Zoom in again to explore the role of water.

Greetings everyone from San Jose where Kathy Perkins, our director, is at the week long event of The Tech Awards 2011 where we are learning how to further our quest to advance science literacy and education worldwide.

If you want to see the the Gala which is the culmination of this week long event, it will be streamed live at Tech Awards. Also, look for coverage by Time and CNBC.

Explore molecule shapes by building molecules in 3D! How does molecule shape change with different numbers of bonds and electron pairs? Find out by adding single, double or triple bonds and lone pairs to the central atom. Check out the molecule and electron geometry names, and watch how the bond angles change dynamically as you add and remove bonds and lone pairs from your molecule. How many different shapes can you make?
Coming Soon: A Real Molecules tab, where you can compare the VSEPR model to real molecules!

PhET research associate, Noah Podolefsky, attended the ESUD 2011-VIII Brazilian Congress of Distance Higher Education, Oct. 3-5 and presented, Using PhET Interactive Simulations to Improve Science Learning in Distance Education. Listen to his talk here.