PhET Blog

A BIG thanks to those of you who have donated!

For those of you still considering to donate before the end of the year, here’s what we’ve done in the last year. PhET has:
- published 15 new sims including Build an Atom, Bending Light and Gravity and Orbits
- initiated teacher professional development webinars that we offer for free
- continued our research to advance effective simulation design and use, expanding to middle school grades
- began planning a new teacher support system which will include videos of exemplary sim classroom use, more teacher activities and concept questions
- expanded PhET usage to over 25 M sims per year around the world (~65% growth from the previous year) and increased our translated sims to over 64 languages

PhETsims will always be free, but we need your help.
Support PhET during our annual campaign.
Donate here. Or by clicking on the Donate Now button at phet.colorado.edu.

PhETsims will always be free, but we need your help.
Support PhET during our annual campaign.
Donate here. Or by clicking on the Donate Now button at phet.colorado.edu.

We are launching our Basics series with the new States of Matter: Basics sim designed specifically for our middle-school audience. In this sim, students can heat, cool and compress atoms and molecules and watch as they change between solid, liquid and gas phases.

Learning goals that States of Matter: Basics addresses include:

• Describe characteristics of three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas.
• Predict how varying the temperature or pressure changes the behavior of particles.
• Compare particles in the three different phases.
• Explain freezing and melting with molecular level detail.
• Recognize that different substances have different properties, including melting, freezing and boiling temperatures.