Software for solving and simulating physical problems about collisions in one and two dimensions for educational and interactive use purposes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51302/tce.2025.21499Keywords:
collisions, simulator, physics, teaching, Unity, learning, ScrumAbstract
The study of physics presents challenges for students and teachers (men and women). It involves understanding and predicting natural behavior through laws associated with experimentation. Simulations provide opportunities for hands-on learning and exploration of abstract concepts by allowing the creation of ideal situations, manipulating variables, and observing their impact on concrete phenomena. The purpose of this work is to create a virtual physics laboratory on particle collisions to help students in the first courses of university Physics to understand these concepts through visual representations and the associated mathematical process. The feasibility and effectiveness of using a video game engine for the rapid development of a simulator that accurately represents different types of collisions is evaluated, taking advantage of the fact that the use of collisions is a fundamental part of these.
The project is applied research, oriented to solve practical problems through the creation of specific software. It started with a bibliographic review, considering pedagogical and technical aspects, followed by the development of the software using Scrum to create a minimum viable product. The Unity game engine was used. The simulator allows the generation of customized problems and consists of four modules that show the behavior of the particles before, during and after the collision, graphically, mathematically and vectorially.
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