Prakash Per­sad

Every­body should know and un­der­stand ba­sic physics for it is the branch of sci­ence that cod­i­fies the work­ings of the phys­i­cal uni­verse. Sad to say, how­ev­er, the av­er­age stu­dent and in­deed per­son, has a huge men­tal block when it comes to this sub­ject. The lack of ad­e­quate lab fa­cil­i­ties in the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school sys­tem does not help the sit­u­a­tion ei­ther. The knowl­edge-based econ­o­my re­quires that sci­ence, of which physics is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent, be taught to and un­der­stood by far more stu­dents than is cur­rent­ly the case. Suc­cess in this ven­ture would be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by get­ting stu­dents en­thused with what is viewed as a drea­ry and dif­fi­cult sub­ject.

It would be safe to say that most stu­dents find com­put­er and mo­bile Apps and games in­ter­est­ing. So it would make sense to use this medi­um to reach them. Mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions are avail­able for teach­ing and more are be­ing de­vel­oped. But why not use ex­ist­ing pop­u­lar and free Apps to teach the ba­sic prin­ci­ples? The an­i­ma­tions in these Apps are based on the laws of physics and thus can be used to il­lus­trate the ba­sic con­cepts, at a min­i­mum.A core top­ic in el­e­men­tary physics is the move­ment of pro­jec­tiles in a grav­i­ta­tion­al field. Prac­ti­cal and in­tu­itive un­der­stand­ing can be ob­tained from pelt­ing man­goes and play­ing crick­et for both in­volve the throw­ing of an ob­ject (pro­jec­tile). So is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the an­gles of re­lease of the ball or stone and the dis­tances trav­elled are grasped.

The use of home­made rub­ber­band sling shots to shoot at Jack Spaniards (wasps), but­ter­flies and each oth­er at home and school, when we were chil­dren that is, gave a prac­ti­cal in­sight in­to forces, spring en­er­gy stor­age and pro­jec­tile mo­tion–physics labs in me­chan­ics, in ef­fect. These tra­di­tion­al play ac­tiv­i­ties have all but dis­ap­peared and hence can­not be used in ex­pla­na­tions in the class­room. But An­gry Birds can!The An­gry Birds App is free and very pop­u­lar. It in­volves the shoot­ing of a bird from a sling­shot at a set of hous­es at vary­ing dis­tances and heights from the sling shot. Pigs are en­sconced in the hous­es. The ob­ject of the games is to get the right tra­jec­to­ry in or­der to de­mol­ish the hous­es and pigs. There are sev­er­al lev­els of the game with in­creas­ing de­grees of dif­fi­cul­ty. Suc­cess at these high­er lev­els of dif­fi­cul­ty re­quires in­creased un­der­stand­ing of the physics of mo­tion and col­li­sion.

To be­come good at the game the play­er must un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the an­gle of re­lease of the bird and the dis­tance it trav­els. In oth­er words, the game sim­u­lates tra­jec­to­ries of pro­jec­tiles re­leased at var­i­ous an­gles. Of course, one may write the equa­tions of mo­tion and do a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion us­ing a stan­dard pro­gram­ming lan­guage or math­e­mat­i­cal tool box and in­deed this is done in lev­el one en­gi­neer­ing cours­es. But be re­mind­ed that the an­i­ma­tion utilis­es the very same math­e­mat­ics and laws em­bed­ded in the graph­ics that make up the App. So why re-in­vent the graph­i­cal wheel when it is there for use and free to boot?The An­gry Birds game can be an ef­fec­tive and en­joy­able tool for teach­ing stu­dents–even those at the pre-school and pri­ma­ry lev­el–many ba­sic con­cepts in physics that in­clude tra­jec­to­ries, forces, mo­ments and en­er­gy in a man­ner that is fun-filled. In ef­fect, the An­gry Bird App is an en­joy­able physics sim­u­la­tion lab suit­able for the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els. It should be not­ed that there is a grow­ing trend of per­form­ing sim­u­la­tion labs, as op­posed to ac­tu­al­ly per­form­ing the ex­per­i­ments in a phys­i­cal lab with ac­tu­al equip­ment, at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. These are labs and are avail­able on­line.