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Simulating gravitational interaction, how tangible is a virtual lab?
M. Fonseca - A. Castrillón C
Grupo Física e Informática, Universidad Distrital, Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá - Colombia



GIREP Seminar
2003


Due to quick change in actual society, it becomes necessary to enhance the processes of teaching-learning of the sciences, in particular of the Physics. The dynamic consists on combining (fusing) the traditional tools with the new possibilities offered by nowadays technology.

One way to get into the dynamics is to work into the ICT is to design and to implement didactic material to support laboratories, and why not, they can substitute experiments whose space or time scale make it impossible to be observed in the lab.

In this sense we have developed a web page around the three body problem enunciated by J. L. Lagrange. On the page it is explained about gravitational Newton’s law, it is outlined the numerical methods, and the three problem is simulated, it is visualized graphically and in three dimensions the system.

Students who have had the opportunity to interact with the page have been enjoyed, and had suggested to us it in introductory courses of physics and astronomy.